Shattered dreams!!
Patrice Yemmene
My Beloved,
Sharing below with you this piece of encouragement from Dr. King
“Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to see you” (Romans) 15:24
One of the most agonizing problems within our human experience is that few, if any, of us live to see our fondest hopes fulfilled. The hopes of our childhood and the promises of our mature years are unfinished symphonies. Is there anyone of us who has not faced the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams?
In Paul’s letter to the Roman Christians, we find a potent illustration of this vexing problem of disappointed hopes: “Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to see you” (Romans) 15:24. One of his ardent hopes was to travel to Spain where, at the edge of the then known world, he might further proclaim the Christian gospel. On his return, he wished to have personal fellowship with valiant group of Roman Christians. The more he anticipated this privilege, the more his heart quickened with joy. His preparations now centered in carrying the gospel to the capital city of Rome and to Spain at the fringe empire.
What a glowing hope stirred within Paul’s heart! But he never got to Rome according to the pattern of his hopes. Because of his daring faith in Jesus Christ, he was indeed taken there but as a prisoner and was held captive in a little prison cell. Nor did he ever walk the dusty roads of Spain, nor look upon its curvaceous slopes, nor watch its busy coastal life. He was put to death, we presume, as a martyr for Christ in Rome. Paul’s life is a tragic story of shattered dream.
Life mirrors many similar experiences. Who has not set out toward some distant Spain, some momentous goal, or some glorious realization, only to learn that he must settle for much less? We never walk as free men through the streets of our Rome; instead, circumstances decree that we live within little confining cells. Written across our lives is a fatal flaw and within history runs an irrational and unpredictable vein. Like Abraham we too sojourn in the promise land, but so often we do not become “heirs with him of the same promise land”. Always our reach exceeds our grasp. Shattered dreams are a hallmark of our mortal life.
Before we determine how to live in a world where our highest hopes are not satisfied, we must ask, what does one do under such circumstances?
One possible reaction is to distill our frustration onto a core of bitterness and resentment. The person who pursues this path is likely to develop a callous attitude, a cold heart, and a bitter hatred toward God, toward those with whom he lives, and toward himself. Because he cannot corner God or life, he releases his pent-up vindictiveness in hostility toward other people. He may be extremely cruel to his mate and inhuman to his children. In short, meanness becomes his dominating characteristics. He loves no one and requires love from no one. He trusts no one and does not expect others to trust him. He finds fault in everything and everybody, and he continually complains.
Such a reaction poisons the soul and scars the personality, always harming the person who harbors this feeling more than anyone else. Another common reaction by persons experiencing the blighting of hope is to withdraw completely into themselves and to become absolute introverts. No one is permitted to enter into their lives and they refuse to enter into the lives of others. Such persons give up the struggle of life, lose their zest for living, and attempt to escape by lifting their minds to a transcendent realm of cold indifference. Detachment is the word which best describes them. Too unconcentrated to love and too passionate to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to experience sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.
A third way by which persons responds to disappointment in life is to adopt a fatalistic philosophy stipulating that whatever happens must happen and that all events are determined by necessity. Fatalism implies that everything is foreordained and inescapable. People who subscribe to the philosophy succumb to an absolute resignation to that which they consider to be their fate and think of themselves as being little more than orphans cast into the terrifying immensities of space. Because they believe that man has no freedom, they wait passively for external forces to decide for them. They never actively seek to change their circumstances, for they believe that all circumstances, as in the Greek tragedies, are controlled by irresistible and foreordained forces. Some fatalist people are religious people who think of God as the determiner and controller of destiny
To sink in the quicksand of fatalism is both intellectually and psychologically stifling. Because freedom is a part of the essence of man, the fatalist, by denying freedom, becomes a puppet, not a person. He is of course, right in his conviction that there is no absolute freedom and that freedom always operates within the context of predestined structure. Even though destiny may prevent our going to some attractive Spain, we do have the capacity to accept such a disappointment, to respond to it, ad to do something about the disappointment itself. But fatalism stymies the individual, leaving him helplessly inadequate for life.
Fatalism, furthermore, is based on an appalling conception of God, for everything, whether good or evil, is considered to represent the will of God. A healthy religion rises above the idea that God wills evil. Although God permits evil in order to preserve the freedom of man, he does not cause evil. That which is will is intended, and the thought that God intends for a child to be born blind or for a man to suffer the ravages of insanity is sheer heresy that pictures god as a devil rather than as a loving father. The embracing of fatalism is a tragic and dangerous a way to meet the problem of unfulfilled dreams as are bitterness and withdrawal.
What then, is the answer? The answer lies in our willing acceptance of unwanted and unfortunate circumstances even as we still cling to a radiant hope, or acceptance of finite disappointment even as we adhere to infinite hope. This is not the grim, bitter acceptance of the fatalist, but the achievement found in Jeremiah’s words “This is a grief, and I must bear it”
You must honestly confront your shattered dream. To follow the escapist method of attempting to put the disappointment out of your mind will lead to psychologically injurious repression. Place your failure at the forefront of your mind and stare daringly at it. Ask yourself, “How may I transform this liability into an asset? How may I, confined in some Roman Cell and unable to reach life’s Spain, transmute this dungeon of shame into a heaven of redemptive suffering?” Almost anything that happens to us may be woven into the purposes of God. It may lenthen our cord of sympathy. It may break our self-ventered pride. The cross, which was willed by wicked men, was woven by God in the tapestry of world redemption.
To continue ...
Rev. Martin luther King in "Strength to Love"
Brother Patrice Yemmene
"Pray for me ... so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador ... Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should" Ephesian 6:19-20