The Bitter Pill

Listen to it

Today I have some readings for you. Two approaches to the difficulties of life. I thought I'd start with blood and carnage:

The day after Thanksgiving, November 24, 1972, was just another day on our 300-acre dairy farm, and I proceeded to work it out as usual with long hours and devoted energy. I managed to leave the fields of golden grain the previous day for about three hours to enjoy a feast with my family, little knowing what lay ahead of me the following day.

While operating the corn picker this Friday afternoon I noticed that one corn-gathering chain was not moving. Disengaging the power-take-off, I observed that the chains were loose and proceeded to adjust the tension. I then engaged the power-take-off from a standing position on the ground, and still one gathering chain did not move. With the corn picker dividing points in a raised position and the machine in operation at about 100 revolutions per minute, I looked into the center corn-divider-access hole to determine why the left gathering chain did not turn. In so doing, I unconsciously bent my right knee in a forward position and into the right gathering chain which was in operation. The gathering chain pulled my leg in a wedged-tight position with knee forward, and the toe of my shoe pointed downward toward the snapping rolls. The slip clutches on the gathering chains were activated, so the chains stopped their moving.

With pains in my legs from the wedging pressure, I realized my leg would be taken into the machine should the chains resume movement. I tried desperately to decide the next move. Will the slip clutches wear out or will they re-engage and pull me into the snapping rolls? My hasty decision was to take hold of my leg with both hands and, with a quick jerk pull my leg free. This was not the answer, as it only loosened my leg enough to permit the slip clutches to re-engage and take my leg into the snapping rolls. One leg was pulled in only to be followed by the other.
In a matter of seconds my legs were practically mutilated to the knees while I remained in a sitting position with the snapping rolls turning under my groins. I screamed loudly for help and almost immediately my voice was faint. Aware that no one was near to hear my call-no one but God-I prayed a simple prayer, "Lord, please send help!" A passage of Scripture from Psalm 18:6 has become very precious to me since that time-"In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried unto my God: He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry came before Him, even into His ears."

During the next 10 to 15 minutes or gruesome agony, I concluded this situation could very well mean death for me. But I was resolved to the fact that "live or die," I was a child of God, and He gave me perfect "peace of mind."

As I remained in this position, I intermittently called with my weakened voice for help. Presently, a fifteen-year-old kid vividly dressed in green appeared on the scene. He was a neighbor boy who lived less than a mile from our farm who had taken a walk in the nearby woods to look for deer tracks. When I saw the young man, whom I have since surnamed Robin Hood, I knew God meant to save my life. With renewed courage, I gave the lad instructions to stop the machine and proceed to get emergency aid. Scott did a terrific job of getting things moving by entering the house and using the telephone. My wife and son, who had been shopping, arrived just as he had completed the call, and together they continued to seek help.

Rescue workers soon arrived with cutting torches and emergency equipment. Also, many friends and neighbors appeared on the scene. After about 45 minutes work, during which time I witnessed and made suggestions to the workmen, I was removed from the machine and rushed to the hospital. It was necessary to have emergency surgery to remove both legs above the knees.

Many folks who have heard this story have asked, "How would you feel about the accident if you were not a Christian?"

My answer is simple. I would be a bitter and resentful man, angry at the lack of safety switches or guard bars as well as my own impetuous response. I would spend a lifetime feeling sorry for myself, as I jealously watch the unimpaired walk by.

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Some of us may take this GODLY approach to difficulties of life. Others may take another road. Here's an open letter I found on myspace to a woman who may have developed a psychosis because of difficulties that were happening in her life:

Mrs. Pearl Burras, General Delivery, Tuna, Texas.
Dear Mrs. Burras. After a recent unsettling phone call from your niece Bertha Bumiller, I feel compelled to write you. As you know, relations have been strong between the Humane Society and those who raise chickens. We do understand that this is your livelihood, disgusting as it may be to those of us here at the Humane Society.

We do feel, however, that you are posing a danger to the children of your neighborhood, as well as their pets. We're sure you love the kids of your neighborhood as much as we do.
Mrs. Burras, we have traced over seventy dog-poisonings to your doorstep. Now, don't you think you've taken eccentricity a bit too far?

We feel that you have been somewhat over-zealous in the protection of your chickens.
In fact, Mrs. Burras, there are those of us at the Humane Society who believes that you actually enjoy poisoning dogs.

We are well aware of your "bitter pills', those strychnine-laced biscuits rolled into enticing little dough balls.

We are also aware that your Husband Henry is the owner of Ripper, the finest birddog in Dewy County. How could anybody who lives around a $2,000 dog like Ripper poison peoples puppies heartlessly?

Mrs. Burras, you have classic symptoms of caninicidal thumbitus, a psychological disorder that causes you to want to kill other people's dogs, for real or imagined reasons.
Now the only known cure for caninicidal thumbitus is to surround the patient with lots and lots of dogs until the urge to kill passes.

And you are in luck, Mrs. Burras. The humane society has a one way bus ticket for you to Dallas, to the Texas State Dog Fair, where you can be surrounded by over a thousand dogs.
Mrs. Burras - if you make it through the entire show without poisoning a single animal, the Humane Society will pay your bus fare home. Think of the peace of mind! And the dogs of your neighborhood can have respite from the death and carnage to which they have been subjected.

Sincerely,
Petey Fisk
Greater Tuna Humane Society.

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I can just see the sad Scenario where Pearl is feeding her chickens, and a poodle get loose in her yard, she quickly searches for the strychnine which has been poorly hidden by Henry her husband. As she lays down the bitter pill. She sweetly says: Here puppy puppy! At which point Ripper's ears perk up and he ingests the poison. The delicious biscuit with the evil death inside. If only she listened to Petey! If only she took that one way ticket to the Texas State Dog Fair. If only she could lay down that bitter pill! Then perhaps little Ripper might have a chance!

When I went to school in Massachusetts I was bright eyed, and in love with learning. My friends skipped around the campus with joy at finding the undiscovered educational country! We would every once and a while run into a pasty white breed that had obviously stayed in their room for far too long. They looked angry and malnourished and they would mainly come out when you were having your most fun. Laughing… Playing music… WEEEEEE.

We began to call these students the B.O.S. this was short for Bitter Older Students. They would stomp up the stairs if you had your music above 5.5 and would approach you in the library if you were smiling and say "I once was like you. I once had hope that this was a fresh exciting place. I once was a freshman just like you. Thought this place would bring me to great heights. Soon you'll want to leave hear too! Soon you'll hate this place just like me!

These Bitter Older students found that the school didn't promise what they thought it was promising. Instead they had a new belief in the school that was something that they hated. It was too expensive, it was not worth it. They just wanted OUT! This bitterness would set in. and sometimes create great apathy. And would cause them to give up, or become graduates after an 8 year pot binge. This bitterness would prove to be their own cell where nothing would happen for years.

Like the B.O.S.'s experience, Life has a tendency to cause bitterness whether you are a corn picker or a woman with a poodle in your yard. Life has a tendency to cause dissatisfaction and perceptions that we don't want to hold on to. We don't want poodles in our yard! We DO want legs! But life takes the working corn gathering chain and takes our legs out from under us. Many of us don't see it like the Christian Corn picker who is witnessing to the people as his body is being cut free. And we begin developing our bitter pill. We play the same scene over and over, mouthing our words of disappointment. Some days we break free and wake up to a new day where we say we're going to quit this addiction once and for all, and then just as abruptly fall asleep with the culprit's stench all over us.

We all have forgivenesses that we must forgive. We all have the road before us that has been there for quite some time. And for some reason we have allowed ourselves to stay at the crossroads. You listen to each others jokes and they haven't changed in years. The careful droning of a bitter tongue gets laughs now, but when others go home, and have the ability to shake off your words they know that you have issues with what you're joking about.
Why do we stay? Why do we stay in our bitterness?

I had the opportunity last Tuesday to have a conversation with someone and they said "People really have two choices: to stay bitter, or to grow and move on."

And I think we have that same choice today. Between bitterness or trust. Frustration or Faith. We have been standing at this crossroads for quite sometime. And the lack of change of scenery has just proven our point; as the hot sun beats down on our souls, making us feel even more trapped. Beat up by our own despair, surrounded by our own doubt.

Even the mention of God being the answer is seen as a Joke. A comedy. A parody of life that tends to make the spewer of the good news to look like a clown. Have hope! God loves you! "HA!" Because the fact is: that when this world is infiltrated by the promises of God, it is ridiculous. It is laughable. One such promise was a child to a 90 year old woman. The post menopausal Sarai was eavesdropping on the angel and her husband, and when the angel expressed her deepest longing: to care for her very own baby, and that she would have that, the only thing she saw was her 70 years of lack. Was she bitter? Regardless there was something funny about the preposterous notion that a woman at her age could, after all this time, have her womb opened and baby born. It's a joke right? It's a funny one.

And when you see the circumstances surrounding the promises of God you really do have two choices. To be bitter or to have a good laugh and hope that God knows what he's doing. Hannah saw this happen in her life, with her child Samuel born. She at first couldn't have a baby. Who knows what envy she had towards the other wives that had children of their own, who knows the sadness in her heart that fueled her prayers? But when bitterness would simply put out the fire of prayer, it's our faith in a God that hears our prayers and answers them, that begins to move us closer to those pure desires of our heart. Bitterness puts out prayer. Growth means including God in the answer.

Throughout scripture we have people that have reason to be bitter. Abraham being promised that he would be the father of many nations, and then having ONE legitimate child. Joseph as he was in jail. Job covered in sores, in the worst pain, and his friends all around him saying "why are you such a sinner?" Even Jesus the Son has just cause to be bitter at God the Father for the invention of the cross.

How did they escape the trap of living in a scathing loathe of life. How did we not get recorded the mutterings under the breath of these people? Were they saints? I guess some of them were. But how come they don't function like normal pissed off people. How could the early Christians view their friends getting sawed in half, and still carry on?

James says something that can trigger anyone's bitter pill: "1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." Thanks James. Now not only do I need to face my trials, but I need to not be pissed at the lame circumstance in which my trials occur?

How can you do that James? How can you not look at the lives of the people in difficult circumstance and take on their outrage? What sort of mental anesthesia are you taking to flip what would make someone bitter into someone that is joyful? Are you a fool? Do you know something that I don't?

Actually James does know something that I think I've forgotten. When James is talking about our attitudes of our heart towards the difficult circumstances in our lives, he has a concept that there is a good purpose behind them. So many times in our existential world, we think that we are a sail to be batted about by the wind for no reason. Trials are meaningless; suffering is senseless, testing is irrational. AND IT IS unless there is a good purpose behind it. James and most of the biblical characters and writers are of the opinion that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. SO the reason why he is saying "consider it pure joy when you face trials" is he has faith that God has purpose in allowing this trial in your life.

A dumb illustration that helped me understand this better was how airplanes are built. They start out designing a new plane on the drawing board. Then blueprints are drawn up and models are made. The models are tested, and then construction begins. After about two years the first plane will roll off the assembly line. BUT the question remains: Will it fly? Will it perform? Are we going to put tons of people on it? Heck No! Not until we know it can fly. So a test pilot must then put the plane through the paces up in the air, then once the plane has proven to be all that the maker said it is, there is confidence in the plane and the airlines will buy it. Likewise we can say our faith is good in theory, by design, etc, but it takes a test to prove that it is genuine. James is saying these trials will show how real your faith is.

But he goes one step further. He says that trying your faith works patience and patience develops her perfect work in you. Why did Sarai have to be barren for 70 years, why does our utmost hearts desire get put off for so long? James would say "because you have a loving God that cares enough for you to wait until you're ready."

Even that can make someone fume. "OOOOO I can't believe it … I want it now" But I can believe a terrible scenario where someone would build a plane, not test it, and in one crash hundreds of casualties would be the result.

Bitterness is the result of not getting what you want, and feeling entitled to it. Bitterness is a cage that keeps you where you are, and cuts you off from any growth into faith and patience. Bitterness stops you from who you are meant to be. If you have bitterness, you might want to ask God to help you.

“But I did ask, and it didn't help.” Did you ask for a baby for 70 years? Did you ask for your people to be set free from slavery? Maybe you just asked for some new legs? Could it be that you have simply forgotten that God loves you, and that the allowance of this difficulty in your life is to let you settle in a trusting relationship with him? "Because you have a loving God that cares enough for you to wait until you're ready."

Let’s break out of our cage!

You are meant to take off in faith. Believe that there is someone out there that has turned the tables on death, and has given you a promise of eternal life. Of life abundant, that lets you laugh at the lies of despair. There is a way to have pure joy when you face the trials of your life. And as those trials prolong their stay. Have faith that your patience will bring you great growth.

Today. Let the Power of God's Promises break open our cages of bitterness so that we can trust in God again, and grow into who He wants us to be.