Hamilton Whaley was a prosperous lawyer in Tampa, Florida. From his own story in GUIDEPOST (11-82) he was happily married, had 5 great kids, a big comfortable house in a pleasant community. He was active in a good church and making more money than he ever dreamed of. He was also a partner in one of the leading law firms in the state, a vast organization with nearly 70 lawyers.
Then in Sept., 1976, he had a minor car accident. Fortunately he was injured only slightly & recovered quickly. When he returned home from the hospital his telephone began to ring. "Mrs. Whaley," the caller would say, "I just read in the Hillsborough County Bar Association Bulletin about your husband's death. I want to express my regrets."
His wife, Betty, was taken at first, even though the calls persisted. They finally discovered on the first page of the Bulletin under a bold, black headline--In Memoriam--was his name, his death notice! Whaley tried to joke about it but the thought stayed with him for weeks. He realized how close he had been to being killed. He tried to imagine what the world would be like without Hamilton Whaley in it. He began to be bothered by it. Would there be anything left behind to show that his life had made a difference?
Hamilton Whaley and his wife, Betty, finally decided through a series of providential events to become house parents at the oldest orphanage in America, the Bethesda Home for Boys in Savannah, Georgia. Betty and he and their teenage son, David, were put in charge of one of 7 cottages. They were responsible for the lives of 20 boys from 5 to 18 years of age.
"Now," he says, "I'm where God wants me to be, in a life that began - instead of ending - with my obituary." Hamilton Whaley had discovered his reason for being. HAVE YOU DISCOVEED YOURS?
I want to take you back nearly 2,000 years to that first Palm Sunday. Jesus of Nazareth comes riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. The children are waving Palm branches. The crowd is shouting, "Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the names of the Lord!" They do not know that the one they are welcoming into their city will soon be dead--crucified like a common criminal. But he knows. All of His life had been directed toward this one place--this one time. He had tried to warn His disciples but they could not understand.
"If I be lifted up," He said on one occasion, "I will draw all men unto me." On another occasion He declared, "No sign will be given to you but the sign of Jonah." He knew what lay ahead but still He rode. It was not easy. A short time later he will be kneeling in a garden praying, "If possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done." It was not easy, but still He rode.
To use a popular expression, He had a date with destiny. He knew who He was and what He was called to do. So on He rode through the excited crowd who could not understand, toward the temple that had been corrupted and the courtyard where He would be accused, and the cross where He would be crucified. He rode on because He knew that His life and His death could make a difference.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he was in a Nazi prison and was destined to be hanged one year later, made this statement, "In view of our supreme purpose, the present difficulties and disappointments seem trivial."
Jesus had that supreme purpose, that certain sense of destiny, that conviction that His life did matter.
On this day when we celebrate His entry into Jerusalem, it is vital for each of us to ask ourselves if we have a supreme purpose for being? Do we sense our date with destiny? Do we believe that our lives really matter in the grand scheme of things?
We need a sense of destiny, first of all to motivate us to always be at our best. Somewhere I read an amusing story about the late Bear Bryant--the legendary coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team.
In one game Alabama was ahead by just 6 points, and the clock had less than 2 minutes to run. He sent his quarterback in with the instruction to play it safe and run out the clock. The quarterback came into the huddle and said, "The coach says we should play it safe, but that's what the other team is expecting. Let's give them a surprise." So he called a pass play. He dropped back and threw, and the defending cornerback, a sprint champion, knifed in, intercepted, and headed for a touchdown.
Now if you know anything about the late Coach Bryant, you know that the Alabama quarterback had a problem. He had to catch that corner back or face Coach Bryant.
That quarterback was no runner but he took after that fleet corner back, ran his down from behind on the 5 yard line, and saved the game. After the game the opposing coach cmae up to Bear Bryant and said, "What's this business about your quarterback not being a runner? He ran down my speedster from behind."
"Well," said Bryant, "your man was running for 6 points. My man was running for his life." Motivation makes a difference. A few years ago a rather unusual announcement was repeated over the radio. The announcer gave several scenes in a progressive history of a certain person. Scene one showed a crying baby and a proud father.
The father was saying, "Oh, it's a boy. It's a boy. We're going to name him Stanley, and one day he will become the president of the United States." In scene 2 Stanley was getting married. At Stanley's wedding the father of the bride was saying to Stanley, "Oh, I know you would like to go to medical school, son, but you are going to join me in the purse manufacturing business."
In the 3rd scene, Stanley and his wife were on an expensive vacation. He obviously had been a successful manufacturer and had made a lot of money.
The final scene showed Stanley's minister preaching his funeral. The minister said," Stanley was much beloved by all those who lived here at the Shady Nook Rest home. He was the best gin rummy player in Shady Nook, and a few people knew that he also had the lowest cholesterol count of anyone here."
Then the announcer on the radio said, "Isn't it sad to live your whole life and never make a ripple and never rock a boat? Join the Peace Corps."
A grand sense of destiny--a sense of purpose, direction, design--we need it if we are to live out the best. As Billy Sunday once put it, "More men fail through lack of purpose than through a lack of talent."
In the second place we need a sense of destiny because of the world's great need. Visitors to Florida throng to see the Bok Singing Tower & Bird Sanctuary. In Edward Bok's youth these words, from the pen of his own grandmother, were indelibly inscribed on his consciousness: "Wherever your lives may be cast, make the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have lived in it."
Many of you are familiar with the name Lucy Stone. American women owe their right to vote as much to the efforts of Lucy Stone as to anyone. She edited the WOMAN'S JOURNAL for mare than 20 of those years, educating and converting other women to the cause. She also served as chairman of the American Woman Suffrage Association. When Lucy Stone died in 1893, she called her only child, Alice Stone Blackwell, to her side just before she passed away. These were her parting words: "Make the world better."
Norman Vincent Peale tells an amusing story of the very early Kentucky frontier. It was after the year of 1782, during which about 1/5 of the pathetically small community had been killed by the Indians. There were never enough hands to do even the simplest job. Each adult was invaluable and each child a burden.
Mr. Jo Craig, a preacher more famous for his frank approach to problems than for his eloquence or diplomacy, was called to the bedside of a woman to hear her dying words. Mr. Craig looked at her a few seconds and then he said to her, "Hannah, if you die and leave all these helpless children for some other woman to care for with things as they are now, it will be the meanest thing you ever did in your life!" It is said that it made Hannah so angry that she sat up in bed "Fever and all and read him out of the church." She got well and survived to rear her family and do her share of the work. In his frankness he had restored her courage and her will to live.
We need to be reminded that there are people who depend on us. Indeed the world depends on us. We have a date with destiny--a great high calling in Jesus Christ. We dare not be like a hunting dog I heard about. Its master took him out for a hunt. The hound scented a deer and followed it a ways, then he switched to the trail of a jackrabbit, then he flushed to a covey of quail, and when his owner caught up with him, he was barking down a gopher hole.
If we don't have a sense of purpose about our lives, that's what we end up doing--barking down gopher holes. We need a sense of destiny about our lives in order to operate at our best, we need a sense of destiny because the world needs what we have to give.
But finally, and foremost, we need a sense of destiny because of who we are--we are disciples of Jesus Christ. We walk in His footsteps. We have been called to be His ambassadors.
Violin virtuoso Paganini told of the origin of the Stradavari quartet. A wealthy patron of the arts purchased the 4 valued instruments and gave them to top musicians. Though they had been kept in "safe" storage, the patron said, "A silent instrument, no matter how well made, is not fulfilling its maker's intentions."
This is the crux of the matter. As Phillipe Vermier once put it, "If you are a disciple of the Master, it is up to you to illumine the earth. You do not have to groan over everything the world lacks; you are there to bring it what it needs .. There where reign hatred, malice and discord you will put love, pardon and peace.
For lying you will bring Truth; for despair, hope; for doubt, faith; there where is sadness you will give joy. If you are in the smallest degree the servant of God, all these virtues of light you will carry with you. Do not be frightened by a mission so vast! It is not really you who are charged with the fulfillment of it. You are only the torch-bearer. The fire, even if it burned within you, even when it burns you, is never lit by you. It uses you as it uses the oil of the lamp. You hold it, feed it, carry it around; but it is the fire that works, that gives light to the world, and to yourself at the same time --
do not be the clogged lantern that chokes and smothers the light; the lamp, timid, or ashamed, hidden under a bushel; flame up and shine before men; lift high the fire of God.
Phillipe Vermier rotting in a Nazi prison lived up to his own philosophy. Obviously so did Jesus of Nazareth, and so did Peter and Stephen and Paul and hundred of thousands of disciples who came after Him. That is why 2,000 years later we celebrate Palm Sunday.
He rode into Jerusalem, knowing what lay before Him. Can you and I dare settle for being the best gin rummy player in Shady Nook with the lowest cholesterol count of anyone here? We have a date with destiny. We are called to live out the best we know. We are called to make this world a better place. We are called to follow in the footsteps of him of whom Paul wrote:
"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, But made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
