FROM THE MAILBAG
Dear Sir:
Greetings in Jesus' precious name!
I am a missionary home on furlough from Senegal, West Africa after having spent ten years there.
I recently chanced upon your publication, the January issue and was much blessed and challenged by it. Please put me on your mailing list. Am much interested in receiving the Feb. issue so I may follow the continued article "The Transfiguration Of Trouble."
May the Lord give you much to bless and encourage your hearts as you continue this labor of love for Him in these last days.
Pennsylvania
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Dear Sir:
I just received from a friend a copy of your "Triumph" and was so blessed through it. Praise to the Lord. May I be put on your mailing list? Thank you so much.
I am not physically afflicted nor a shut-in, but still gain much blessing and help from such reading as it glorifies our precious Lord.
Pennsylvania
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Dear Sir:
Almost nine years ago I sent you a get-well card, and in return you have been kind enough to send me the "Triumph." I read your small paper faithfully and then pass it on to a foreign mission in South India. I am of the Catholic faith and the mission is also Catholic. They write to say how very much they enjoy that small paper.
The poems in your last issue are just wonderful. I clip them and mail them to shut-ins.
Please accept the small donation enclosed. It isn't much I know, but it is sent with my best and sincere wish that you can carry on your wonderful work.
Thank you so very much for the many nice moments you let me have through the "Triumph."
God bless you and yours.
Pennsylvania
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Dear Sir:
I have found so many comforting articles in your little publication that I am asking you to please include the names of my two sisters on your mailing list. One of them is 89 years of age and the other 93 and I am 78.
We are all very much alone and I am hoping my sisters will find your little paper as inspiring and helpful as I have found it.
May God bless you, and I know He will, for the wonderful work you are doing.
California
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Dear Sir:
I believe your "Triumph" magazine is a special magazine that meets the special needs of shut-ins. I have been blessed by many of the articles. May God bless all your efforts for Him.
I am enclosing two dollars. For the coming year please send a copy to my mother and sister who live in California.
May the Lord enable you to serve Him the wonderful way you are serving. God bless you abundantly more.
Beirut, Lebanon
P.S. Kindly send me five copies of each issue, which will be distributed prayerfully.
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"I am the living bread which came down from heaven:
if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever."
-- Jesus
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GOD'S LOVE
By F. B. MEYER
The Lord Jesus stripped Himself of everything except love, that He might more readily meet each human soul on its own level. Being in the form of God, and equal with God, He emptied Himself, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross, for our sakes. He stripped Himself of all, that He might give to us fair clothing instead of the fading fig leaves of apologies and excuse.
He descended so low as to put the Everlasting Arms beneath the most hapless and hopeless. He desired to get so low, that none could get lower. He was set on proclaiming His Gospel so that even the dying thief might enter Paradise, and that not one prodigal in all the human family should think that he had sunk too low or gone so far as to be excluded from the hope of salvation.
"He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him" (Hebrews 7:25).
Surely it is inexcusable that any soul of man should evade the love of God, when the Son of His love has made so great an effort to acquaint us, not only with its height and breadth and length, but with its depth. Why are we so cold, so unmoved, so inert? The apostle speaks of the love of Christ constraining him, of the love of God shed abroad within us and flooding our heart. How is it that, with God's love so near, so close, so easily with our reach, we are so apathetic and irresponsive?
The cure is, in part, the consciousness that God's love is all around us, which we cultivate by meditation. "Thy Omnipotence," says St. Augustine, "is not remote from us even when we are remote from Thee"; and we may say as much of His love. Even when we feel cold and distant, we are beset by God's love behind and before, and His grace is overshadowing us with infinite tenderness. Do not try to kindle love by thinking of the Cross as far away in the past, but by musing and meditating on Christ's love as being as tender and real as when He said to His mother, "Behold thy son," and to John, "Behold thy mother."
Jesus knows the need of our heart, and is even now close at hand to lead us by the Holy Spirit into the realization of His love. Let us open our nature to the Blessed Comforter, and He will not be slack in His response. "The fruit of the Spirit is love."
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DENIAL
We talk about living for Christ. It is more profitable to speak of dying with Him. There are probably too many of us today still living, who should have died long ago. We have shunned the Cross and passed the evening of our little day in the world's firelight. Our great aspirations have fallen before the simple pressures of ordinary folk expressing surprise that anyone should be one of His disciples. And so the old story of the denial in the courtyard is re-enacted, and before the laughter of a girl and her pointed questions, or the scorning of the men, the would-be follower of the Christ sells out again, until he weeps without, broken by the Saviour's eyes.
-- Geoffrey T. Bull
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I WAS A CARROT SCRAPER
The true story of Maxine Vail
By FAITH COXE BAILEY
In Buckner, Illinois, teeth braces are strictly for the girls whose fathers own the mines. If it's your stepfather who carries his lunch pail on the 7:00 A.M. shift, you can be sure your teeth will stay the way they came in. Mine came in "buck," and I found out the only remedy for buckteeth when you haven't the cash to pay for braces, is to keep your mouth shut. This may be fine for the teeth, but it's withering for the personality.
In those days, stories of six-foot-tall glamour queens hadn't seeped into Buckner. It wouldn't have helped if they had. I wasn't six-foot; just tall enough and a gawky girl. At school dances, the dwarfed fellows always were stuck with me for a partner, and we lurched and bobbed across the floor together. But I worked out a dandy cure for my height; I curved my shoulders into a mound and developed a walk that was a cross between a glide and a hunch.
The nice ladies in the church said over their teacups, "Pity about poor Maxine, isn't it? Her brother's so good-looking and poor Maxine. So tall and awkward, and oh, those protruding front teeth! Couldn't something be done about them?"
But it wasn't as if the fellows didn't ask me for dates. Not at all; one did. He asked me to go to church and Mom said No.
"Look, Mom," I pleaded, "if you want me to be friendly, like you're always talking about, you'd better let me go to church next week with Bob and his girl and -- Bud."
"No," Mom couldn't be persuaded. "You're too young. You absolutely cannot have a date with that boy."
"But, Mom, all the other girls can go to church with a boy, and my own brother, Bob will go with me. Mom, Bud is the only fellow who ever asked me for a date. Please, please, let me go."
Mom still said No. "Absolutely no."
"O.K.," I told her. "Right here and now, I swear I will never go inside a church again as long as I live. Never, never, never."
For a thirteen-year-old girl, that was dramatic. But I meant it, and I kept my word, too, for a long time.
About four years later, we moved to Chicago. I still had chipmunk teeth and fancy dreams. Maybe business school and then a job out in the world, where surely I would meet a man who would love a girl for what she is, not for what she appears to be.
My dreams must have stuck out as my teeth did, because one of the business school teachers fixed me up with a blind date.
My date's name was Ray Vail and he said he liked to spend his evenings dancing. We went to a Chicago dance hall and Ray Vail held me close. The band was playing "Dancing Cheek to Cheek." There was a cloud of my dreams swirling around us when out of the cloud I heard him say, "Hey, you're tall enough so we can dance cheek to cheek. You know, I don't think I ever danced with a gal as tall as you."
I tripped over one of my dreams then and stepped solidly on his toe. "Excuse me," he said in my ear. "Say, let's start home early and talk about when we can get together next."
After the second date with Ray Vail, I began idling in front of furniture-store window displays on my way home from business school. A good-looking smooth dancer like Ray ask a gawk like me to marry him?
Maybe the story books weren't wrong. Because he did.
From the start, the marriage went "sour." I couldn't transform Ray into a home-loving man no matter what I did. Most likely it was my face he objected to spend his evenings with.
Even when I told him he was going to be a family man, he reached for his hat, lying on our hall table.
"Baby, huh?" he said. He twirled the hat around on one finger. He buttoned his coat and tucked his red-and-black striped scarf around his neck. "Well, I sure hope it don't yell its head off. The place is too small for a man to relax with a baby yelling at the top of its lungs."
I watched him go. "There goes my good-looking, smooth-dancing husband," I thought. "The one that married a horse named Maxine." I wanted to pull his hat down over his slick black hair.
The rest sounds like those confession stories where the heroine gets a bad deal. It was all bad -- the time in the hospital, the way that Ray looked at baby Sylvia when I brought her home, the nights he slept in the park because she cried too loud.
Sure she cried. She heard nothing but loud talk and bickering from her dad and mom; raising her voice came natural.
One night, when she was about three, she screamed louder than ever.
"There, darling, try to sleep now. Mother'll put you back in your bed."
She stiffened. "No, no, hold me, Mommie, hold me."
Ray woke up. "Aw, for the love of Pete, Maxine, can't you do something with her? I work all day; she's your job. For my money, I'd like to fire you."
He sat there on the edge of the bed with his slick hair twisted and ruffled, lighting a cigarette. I pulled on my bathrobe with the bacon grease spilled down the front.
"You just got what you asked for, Brother. I'm leaving," I said.
The only suitcase we owned was under the bed. I scraped it across the floor, folded up my two wool dresses and laid Sylvia's clothes on top of them and sat on the cover. Ray watched me. He rubbed out his cigarette and lit another. With his thumb nail, he flipped the match toward the ash tray.
"What am I supposed to do with all this furniture and junk?" he asked. Those were the last words my husband ever said to me.
For the next two years, Sylvia and I lived in a furnished room, with light housekeeping privileges. The bed had a faded chintz spread, and the easy chair spilled stuffing out of both arms. In a closet was a hot plate and an icebox with one hinge off the door.
Now I wasn't just poor Maxine who never had any dates; I was Maxine Vail who hadn't held her husband, whose marriage had failed. You know, Maxine Vail with the awful buck teeth.
I got a job days and dragged Sylvia over to Mother's while I was working. Nights I brought her back to the room with me. It was a merry-go-round of work and cooking on a hot plate and washing clothes at midnight, hanging them up to dry on a string stretched across our only room.
Sylvia was growing up to be a nervous, confused little youngster; and the night the notice came that my divorce had gone through uncontested, I kicked off my shoes, plopped into an easy chair, too tired to cry.
I jumped from job to job -- a factory, a massage parlor on Sixty-third Street, operator of a freight elevator. The freight elevator was as low as I could get, I thought.
"Why shouldn't I complain?" I crabbed to my mother. "I don't know what I ever did to deserve a life like this. You know what I'm doing now? I'm on that elevator and I'm hauling the freight off and on it, myself. I tell you I'm quitting, I'm going to find something else.
I found something else, all right. Piece work at the canned soup plant, where I was a carrot scraper -- fifteen minutes to the bushel basket!
I thought the job would suit me fine. You didn't need beauty to be a carrot scraper. You didn't need brains. You sat at a long table with fifty women and scraped carrots.
Every fifteen minutes I got another basket of carrots shoved at me. I had to scrape all of them, toss them in the bin and be ready for the next basket in fifteen minutes flat.
But my hands got tangled up. All around me streaks of orange whizzed through the air. The other women could do it; what was wrong with Maxine Vail?
Pick one up, scrape, scrape. I hitched up my shoulders into more of a mound, clamped my big teeth over my bottom lip and tried. Pick it up, scrape, scrape, toss it in the bin, pick another, faster, faster.
"Hey, gal, take it easy."
A small redhead crowded in beside me on the bench. It was Gladys Anderson from across the room.
"Don't be funny," I said. She'd been watching me from across the room, thought if I didn't stop trying so hard I'd crack up. "Move over a couple of inches. "I'm through with mine and we've still got almost six minutes left to finish yours."
But the sight of her helping me was galling. "How do you think it makes me feel to have a little thing like you helping a big cow like me?"
What she said then puzzled me. It was something about God making me tall. All the time she was scraping the carrots, she talked.
"If you ever want to talk anything out, no matter what, you can come around to me," she said.
"Thanks," I told her. "There's nothing wrong with me that one decent break wouldn't fix."
"You feel pretty sorry for yourself, don't you?" Her hands were skimming down the sides of the carrots.
"I'm bored with the whole mess," I told her. "I think I'll have a big stiff drink after work."
Then she flung more words at me, about not needing a drink if you're a Christian.
Right then, the foreman jumped us. "All right, all right, get with it, Maxine. You're one of the slowest girls in the place. Get a few more of those carrots out of that basket or you'll get out."
That did it. I threw down my scraper and I stood up and I yelled, "No big lug like you is going to tell me what to do. I'd like to see you scrape just a dozen of your filthy carrots. I'm going to scrape the things out of my hair and get out of here right now. And as far as I'm concerned brother, you know where to go."
I didn't look at Gladys or at the foreman. I stamped out.
I got as far as the time clock when I started to cry. But Gladys had left the carrots and followed me out. She gave it to me straight, told me I was my own worst enemy. I knew that. But I didn't get it when she said I could die, be born again, and begin to live in Christ.
Sounded like religion and I hadn't been in church since back in Buckner where those nice ladies said over their teacups, "Poor Maxine."
"Maxine, you're so tired trying to do it all. You're so 'heavy-laden' you're weighed down with enough self-pity to sink a battleship. But listen, Honey, I've good news for you if you're at the end of your rope."
I leaned on the time clock and kept listening.
"You're tired, right?" she asked.
"I don't think I'll ever get rested."
"But you can, Honey. Listen, Christ said, 'come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.' "
"Gladys, this had better all be true. Look me straight in the eye. You had better know this is all the truth. I'm at the end of my rope."
Then I said Yes, I'd go to church with her that night. It wasn't really a church. It was a mission, the Pacific Garden Mission.
After the sermon, I wanted to go up front for prayer. But I couldn't walk down the aisle. "Horsey" Maxine walk down in front of all those people, all those men? The piano was sending forth a sweet song I remembered from childhood. Gladys was beside me. In the prayer room, she kept whispering, "For God so loved Maxine that He gave His only begotten Son that if Maxine believes in Him, she should not perish but have everlasting life."
That was ten years ago. I'm still no beauty, and when I laugh, nobody can miss those buck teeth. In spite of this I laugh a lot.
Sylvia laughs too. She's no nervous girl any more; she's a healthy, normal teen-ager.
I'm still supporting her, and we still live a simple life. Pity myself? No, why should I? I have everlasting life and belong to the Son of God.
(In "Unshackled," copyright, 1952, by Moody Press, Chicago.)
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WHEN WE WONDER WHY
By JOHN WILDER
Part Two
A lovely girl I knew had surrendered her life for foreign missions. Gentle, pure of heart, and dedicated to the Lord, she was a model of Christian usefulness in her church. One evening, in the company of Sunday school companions, she slumped from her seat at a social and was lifted up lifeless by her friends. Why?
Why does the Lord do things as He does?
So often things happen to God's children that appear to have no purpose whatever and seem so far removed from any reason. However, the Bible casts a great deal of light on the reasons behind God's actions, and if we will be willing to search the Scriptures, we can find answers to many of the questions that can never be answered if we only look at people and things in this present world, and we can find peace for our souls.
The Bible strikes a lovely chord in Colossians 1:16. In speaking of Jesus, Paul says:
For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him.
" . . . all things were created by him and for him." Every human being, every animal, every tree and blade of grass, every rock and every speck of dust, every drop of water and every grain of sand, every atom and every molecule in this world or in any other world, every angel and every spirit anywhere has been made for just one purpose -- to bring glory and honor to the name of Christ.
This is why people exist, and more especially the people of God. They are for the pleasure and glory of God's dear Son. Certainly to the true Christian, no greater satisfaction can come than the knowledge that he is being used for the pleasure and honor of Jesus.
In the ninth chapter of John there is the story of a blind man who met Jesus one day. Jesus stood in front of the people and gave sight to this man who had been blind from his mother's womb. This miracle created quite a stir among the people and a great deal of discussion followed. The disciples asked Jesus who was responsible for the man's blindness, his parents or himself. But Jesus answered that the man had been born blind so that one day he might be used to furnish a bit of glory to the Son of God.
Think of it! For perhaps thirty years that poor man had groveled in the dust of the streets, hoping perhaps for a penny or two or a kind word from the hurrying throngs. During all of his childhood, while other boys romped and played, that little boy had groped his way about the dooryard, lonely in his dark little world. And why? For the glory of God! For all those years he sat in darkness, unknowingly waiting for Jesus to come by and obtain some glory by giving the blind man his sight. Years and years of darkness that the Son of God might have a single moment of glory! But it was enough. In the long run, when this brief instant of time has been swallowed up in the vastness of eternity, that ex-blind man will know -- if he does not already know -- that those years of blindness were not too great a price to pay in order that Jesus Christ might receive glory from his misfortune.
As a boy I knew a Christian family. They were poor, but they were much respected and the whole town loved them. They were faithful workers in our little church and as good and as kind as any people I have known. There were several children in the family, most of them about grown, but the baby was a little boy.
When the youngest child was about three, he was playing one evening on the lawn. It was after supper and the parents sat on the front porch. The child was playing here and there, and in a moment disappeared. The parents missed him in a moment but it was too late. Suddenly to their ears came the scream of rubber on pavement and a soft thud. Horror-struck, the mother and father leaped to their feet and ran around the corner of the house. Out in the street stood an automobile and in front of the automobile stood a neighbor holding something in his arms. The parents raced to take their child from the man, but the angels had already been there.
The whole town was in grief over this tragedy. Out went the news to brothers and sisters and they gathered home. A day or two later we went out to the edge of town to lay the little boy to rest. The pastor concluded the brief committal service, and friends started to lower the casket into the grave. As they did so, I looked up at the child's father. His face was wet with tears, but suddenly he looked up toward the sky and smiled. It was like heavenly sunshine. Then he said, "Thank you, Jesus, for letting us keep him as long as You did."
It was one of the greatest sermons I ever heard. There is no way of knowing now, but out yonder somewhere I believe with all my heart that we shall find that God received great glory from the humble tribute a brokenhearted daddy paid Him over a little boy's grave.
This brings us to the last thought. Let us look at Romans 8:18.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us.
There is coming a time in the future when God's child will come into the fulness of his redemption. No Christian in this world has received all that God has promised him. Our salvation, though settled and sealed when we place our trust in Christ Jesus, cannot reach its fulness until we put on our glorified bodies in the presence of God. Now we are justified -- those who trust in Christ -- but then we shall be glorified!
What does it mean to be glorified? No living person can answer this question. There is no experience within the reach of living men by which the heart can grasp the meaning of glorification. It is so wonderful, so out-of-this-world, so far above the tallest dreams of men, that nobody has any real idea of what glorification means.
But it is coming to every believer. Now we can only await the boundless thrill of that joyful time and eagerly comfort our hearts with the anticipation of it. And when that time comes, and God's child puts on his glorified body, he will discover in an instant of time that all of the suffering of this present world was nothing when compared to the final victory and the unending happiness of God's redeemed children.
As a few flecks of dust are not worthy to be compared to a handful of diamonds, neither will any of our earthly experiences be worthy to be compared to the imperishable joys that will come to us when at last we meet the Saviour face to face.
For the moment, we cannot always know why God does things as He does. But one thing we do know. Our Father is looking out for His child. And He will allow only those things to happen to that child that will bring blessings in the end. God is never surprised. Things never slip up on Him. He is in control. As the wise man has said -- we may not know what the future holds, but we know Who holds the future.
(Pamphlet by Moody Press, Chicago)
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