What's Your Hurry?

 

I felt like being a little nostalgic this week. There’s an old “Peanuts” comic strip that shows Charlie Brown and Schroeder walking in a deep discussion. Schroeder asks, “Is Snoopy a hunting dog?” “I guess he is in a way,” says Charlie Brown. Schroeder then asks, “What does he hunt, animals or birds?” “Neither” says Charlie, “What he hunts for mostly is an easier way of life.”

Here’s something to think about. It’s Saturday evening about 1921. You live on a farm. You have worked hard in the fields and doing chores all week. You go to the well and draw enough water to fill a large wash tub. Water is heated on a wood burning stove to break the chill of the cold well water. You use a cake of homemade soap to bathe with. You always want to be first in the tub before the rest of the family who will share the same bath water. If things go well, you’ll get to take another bath next Saturday night. Bringing the song “Count Your Blessings” to mind I can’t help but compare life today to what it was fifty years ago. Most people, and many Christians among them, are not very thankful for even the simple things that make life better. The greatest of all blessings is the blessing of is being able to hear and obey the Gospel of Christ. For most, the only thing denying this blessing in one’s life is going to get it. Many in the world can have this opportunity only with great difficulty and at times even under persecution. The Gospel offers the hope of salvation (Romans 1:16). The Gospel obeyed takes away our sins (Acts 2:38). The Gospel, neglected, costs one dearly.

I watch some antenna TV and there are channels that run shows from the simpler days of life. I was watching “The Andy Griffith Show” recently. Since the show began in 1960, I can remember with great fondness Andy, Barney, Aunt Bee, Opie, Goober, Gomer, Floyd, and the rest of the Mayberry characters as they entertained us with their humor and wisdom as well, along with some good moral teaching. One of the shows entitled, “What’s Your Hurry?” delt with a sermon that a visiting minister delivered one Sunday morning. Dr. Breen, all the way from New York City, extolled the value of rest and relaxation as he thundered his all-important question to the audience that day, “What’s your hurry?” Andy and his family and the gang talked about the minister’s message after Sunday lunch. They agreed that their lives were too busy, and they needed to do things that mattered and were relaxing and enjoyable. Reminiscing about the “good old days” they talked about when they used to have Sunday afternoon concerts on the town square. Someone mentioned they ought to do that again and before you knew it, they all started running around trying to organize a concert for that very afternoon. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong with their plans. Andy couldn’t get the band to sound like it used to. Aunt Bee and Mrs. Edwards found out how bad the band uniforms had deteriorated. Barney and his sidekicks found out that the gazebo’s foundation was rotten beyond repair, too unsafe to be used. Disgusted, they all ended up at Andy’s house worn out and frustrated by hurrying around so much. Ironically, the minister comes by to find them there and remarks that he is glad to see that they have followed the advice of his sermon. Andy invited him to come in and stay a while, but the minister says that he must be running on. The show concludes with Andy saying to the minister, “What’s your hurry?”

[Psalm 46:10] I know that this was just a television show. What’s sad is that too many of us are living this kind of life every day! The psalmist wrote, “Be still and know that I am God.” Maybe we ought to revisit Snoopy and hunt for a more fulfilling way of life.