In this morning's message, I mentioned A.J. Gossip. In 1927, at the age of 54, the Scottish minister's wife died suddenly and unexpectedly. When he returned to the pulpit shortly after the tragedy, he decided to preach a message on his loss. It became his most famous sermon. His text was Jeremiah 12:1-5, where Jeremiah complains to God and God replies (NIV), “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?” Gossip's comments:
Here is a man who, musing upon the bewilderments of life, has burst into God’s presence, hot angry, stunned by His ordering of things, with a loud babble of clamorous protest. It is unfair, he cries, unfair! And frowningly he looks into the face of the Almighty. It is unfair! And then suddenly he checks himself.... For after all, he asks himself, what is it you have to complain about so far? Nothing that everybody does not share. Only the usual little rubs and frets and ills of life that fall to everyone, no more. And if these have broken through your guard, pushed aside your religion, made you so sour and peevish and cross towards God—God help you, what will happen when, sudden as a shell screaming out of the night, some one of the great crashing dispensations bursts in your life, and leaves an emptiness where there had been a home, a tumbled ruin of your ordered ways, a heart so sore you wonder how it holds together?
I have the sermon in a book, but you can find it in full online here.
My sermon is online here, entitled, "When You Feel Like a Bug on the Windshield of Life."
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