The Withheld Completions of Life
There are certain conditions which are to all good life just what the flower is to the plant. They furnish it its natural completion. They crown its struggles with a manifest success. These conditions of peace and pleasure are the life's success. But when the life, conscious of the character out of which these conditions ought to come, finds that they do not come, finds that it pauses on the brink of its completion and cannot blossom, then comes bewilderment, then come impatient questionings and doubts. This is the state of many lives, especially about religious things.
I. In answer to our wondering question "What does it mean?" there are two things to be said. The first is this: that such a suspension of the legitimate result, this failure of the flower to complete the plant, does show beyond all doubt a real condition of disorder. The world is broken and disordered, that is the first thing that is meant when you help men, and they scorn you, when the world's benefactors are neglected or despised. And secondly, there is a blessing which may come to a man even out of the withholding of the legitimate completion of his service. It may throw him back upon the nature of the act itself, and compel him to find his satisfaction there.
II. The plant grows on towards its appointed flower, but before the blossom comes some hand is laid upon it, and the day of its blossoming is delayed. The emotional and affectional conditions are the natural flower of the wills and dedications of our life. But we resolve, we dedicate ourselves, and though the prophecy and the hope immediately begin to assert themselves all through us, the joy, the peace, the calmness of assurance, does not come. The ideal life, the life of full completions, haunts us all. Nothing can really haunt us except what we have the beginning of, the native capacity for, however hindered, in ourselves. Jesus does not blame Peter when he impetuously begs that he may follow Him now. He bids him wait and he shall follow Him some day. But we can see that the value of his waiting lies in the certainty that he shall follow, and the value of his following when it comes will be in the fact that he has waited. So if we take all Christ's culture, we are sure that our life on earth may get already the inspiration of the heaven for which we are training, and our life in heaven may keep for ever the blessing of the earth in which we were trained.
Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons,p. 19.
References: John 13:37. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 416; J. Keble, Sermons for Holy Week,p. 36. John 13:37; John 13:38. C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical,p. 103.