Wednesday, December 13, 2023

“The human spirit will endure sickness; but a broken spirit – who can bear?”

Proverbs 18:14

I know that there are movements within many Christian traditions to exchange the old, familiar hymns for some of the more updated, contemporary offerings from the latest popular Christian recording artists. I don’t mind that necessarily. Some of my personal favorite worship music pieces are songs that have come out in the last 30 years as compared to the ones that came out from the previous 300 years. But, to be completely transparent, I still love the classics. That probably makes me “old” and “out of touch” with the modern worshipper. If so, so be it. The classics speak to me in ways that some of the more modern pieces do not.

One of those oldies but goodies that I still love is the hymn “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” The lyrics include this line: “I am tired, I am weak, I am worn.” The hymn was written in 1932 by Thomas Dorsey and George Allen. That’s before I was even born. Yet, as I write this devotion, I truly feel connected with these lyrics. Current temperatures are in the mid-eighties, and it hasn’t reached 12 noon yet. In Texas, that might be considered a normal summer day. In Wisconsin, it is hot. On top of that, it has been kind of a rough week. I am feeling tired, weak, and worn.

This is not a new experience for me. In fact, I used to have these feelings much more frequently when I was in my 20’s back when I was a student in both college and seminary. These days, I am prepared for these feelings, and I know how to deal with them. Back then, in my younger days, I was not as good at knowing what to do to help me deal with those feelings. Thank God, I had people around me who did.

By the time the calendar reached December in 1986, I had spent almost four months away from home as a student going to seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I could not go home for the weekend like I could during college. Finals were a couple of weeks away. The pressures were starting to build. Life was hard and getting harder. I didn’t feel like my usual, happy self. I was ready to take a break from everything. And, although that break was coming in about two weeks, that didn’t seem soon enough.

Then, in early December, in the midst of my Early Church and Its Creeds class, it started to snow. As the flakes began to fall, my gaze moved away from the professor and his lecture and toward the windows surrounding our classroom where I could watch the flakes fall with greater intensity. I did not experience many snowfalls in south Texas as a kid. So, the gentle precipitation of these marvelous snowflakes was a wonderful distraction. The professor, who was also from the south, paused the lecture and addressed me and my distracted nature to tell me, “Mr. Spies, the fascination with the snow will diminish as the season progresses.” He was right, of course. But, at the moment, I was enjoying the something new that nature had provided. By the late afternoon, I got to experience a rare wonder during my first 22 years of life – a snow packed landscape.

At supper that night, there were many conversations with friends about the first time they went sledding or otherwise remembered playing in the snow as a kid. I had never gone sledding (since we had no snow-covered hills on my farm) and, in my entire life, I had only made a couple of small snowmen from the trivial amount of snow that I had seen as a child. This day was special. And my seminary friends were determined to help me experience childhood joys even though those childhood years had long passed.

The women who took care of preparing our meals found a sled in the basement of the Refectory. Although there were things on the campus that had been there since the time of the Civil War, I don’t think this sled was one of those items. However, I also wasn’t convinced that it had not been around that long. It clearly was an antique. But it was an antique that still got the job done. We took that sled; and, with the help of friends who had a lot more experience with such things, I got to experience my first sledding adventure down Seminary Ridge on the hill just outside of Valentine Hall. For a moment at least, the broken spirit had been replaced with new found joy and renewed energy.

Later, that spot became a favorite for sitting and reading when the weather was nice. It was a pleasant place where I could escape when I wanted to drown out the noise from the activities happening on the other side of the Valentine Hall. It was a great space for looking out at the city below and considering the things that happened on that historic piece of land. And, when the snows returned each year, as they always did, it became a wonderful place where I could once again go sledding when I was feeling a little too tired, too weak, and too worn. It was hard to maintain a broken spirit when I was busy sledding with friends.