March 9: Of Heart and Nerve and Sinew, and Tough Bullets to Chew

Numbers 11:24-13:33

Mark 14:22-52

Psalm 52:1-9

Proverbs 11:1-3

"Abba, Father," He said, "everything is possible for You.  Take this cup from Me.  Yet not what I will, but what You will."

- Mark 14:36

Three things about Kipling I will have written about in the past.  

First: the best selling post card.  Nerdish young man and flirty young woman, under a tree, the man with an open book before him.  Man asks woman: "do you like Kipling?"  Woman replies "I don't know, you naughty boy.  I've never kippled."

Second, his poem "If".  It is one of my favorites, so please indulge me.  It describes a person of strength and maturity as one who is able to master one's selfish and immature instincts, one able to respond rather than react, to fight what one ought despite all instinct to flee. The particular lines that come to mind:



 If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

The third, a line he wrote to commemorate the sinking of the ship Birkinhead, the first such instance where men stood by to let women and children into the lifeboats first, when soldiers on the way home mustered on deck and gave way to the younger and the fairer, as the ship burned.  He wrote 

To stand and be still to the Birkinhead drill 

   is a damn tough bullet to chew.

There are still those who say our Lord was weak, because a strong man would have tried to fight the Pharisees and the Romans, and a strong God would have won!  To them I submit that our Lord suffered as man did, and from the verse above clearly knew the ordeal He was to face.  Yet He stood and was still.   And He forced His heart and nerve and sinew to serve His turn long after they were gone.  We know why He did it.  Sometimes it serves me well to remember the cost it involved, and how He could have chosen NOT to pay it. 

Father, helps us to follow the example of Your Son who, when You called Him to pain and suffering, chose to follow Your will instead of His preferences.  When You call us to do the same, give us the Your Will, so that long after they are gone, our heart and nerve and sinew are still able to hold on.