Wise words from John Sullivan about recovering in times of loss

John Sullivan
From: Former Salvation Army Officers' Fellowship

This message is about what we do when things do not go well. What we do reveals the kind of person we are. Do we panic? Do we fold up in a state of paralysis? Do we withdraw from the situation in fear or hurt? Do we protest and ask, "Why did this happen?

The first thing to do is to sit down for a half-hour and do nothing. We need to breathe deeply, until one's body quiets down, then we need to say to our inner self these four things:

1.There is nothing that has happened to me that hasn't happened to others.
2. I knew ahead of time that as a human being I ran the risk of something like this.
3. There are people who do their greatest work under these conditions.
4. I don't know how I'm going to handle this, but I know that I can.

Then it is time to pray. Instead of praying for something, pray about it. In one sense we've already been doing it. We have been thinking about our situation in God's presence before we ask for anything. We have been draining off some of the bitterness in our self.

If we can be quiet long enough, we will begin to see the situation in which we find our self not only from our point of view, but we'll see it from another point of view, and it will look different. Then it is time to ask God for what we want. If we want help, ask for it. If we want to win some battle, fought behind the closed doors of our life, ask for a victory. If we want to get out of a difficult situation, ask God to help us get out of it.

And after we ask, then we need to go to work on our self. If we want to be well, we need to work with the forces of nature that will help to make us well. If we want a friend we need to be a friend to someone. If we want to find the meaning of life, we need to begin by making some corner of our life to mean something. We will not get what we want just for the asking. We may get something greater than what we asked for. We may get what we wish all of us could get, and that is a deeper root-age in things.

One of the reasons why we're so likely to snap in heavy storms, the way trees do, is that our roots don't go deep enough. The deeper our root-age is, the greater the lifting power will be; that is the deeper we go into the very nature of existence, the more realistic we are about life and suffering, the greater lifting power we will have when time comes for us to raise some great burden that we would never choose, but which has been laid upon us.

I wonder if this is what Isaiah meant by waiting upon the Lord: "They shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run, and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint." When things do not go well, we will wait upon the Lord: we will sit down, we will stop fussing, we will let the engine idle, and say the four things to our self, and then pray about it. When we have waited. we are more likely to find that we will not only have the strength to walk, step by step, day by day, and not faint.