Fortune – Sunday, June 20, 1982
It is a platitude to say that best things may come from worst circumstances. And like most platitudes, this one is occasionally true. Disease may make us ill, but from that illness may come the immunity which protects us in the future. From what is now a blight may spring our greatest blessing.
In 1666 the Great Fire destroyed this great city of London. Seven-eighths of the city was reduced to ashes; 87 churches were burned, including old St. Paul’s. Most who saw the smoldering rubble were so overwhelmed by despair that consideration was given to rebuilding London elsewhere. But while many were defeated by the present, some dreamed of the future. The great architect Dr. Christopher Wren looked beyond the devastation to the opportunity—the opportunity to plan a city that would spring from the ashes of London more magnificent than would have been possible without the fire. The Great Fire had burned the field; Christopher Wren was prepared to plant. And less than a week after the fire was brought under control, he presented to Charles II plans for a new city.
Such accounts of courage and foresight abound in mankind’s history, and we may take faith from them and be encouraged by them. But it would be naive and untrue for us to believe that all things are for the best. We never are better for having sinned; and there is tragedy that has no purpose, tragedy that has only the meaning we impose on it.
But we, like Christopher Wren, must be willing to impose meaning on life; we must be prepared to remove our lives from the arbitrary definitions of fortune.
The Great Fire was not in itself a blessing to England or her people. Indeed, such a destruction might have defeated a less hearty, less faithful society. And yet, we look around us now, and we see no evidence of that 17th Century inferno; and in place of those churches destroyed, we see churches rebuilt.
God regrets our losses, reaches out to us in our suffering. And there are times when he will respond to our prayers by overwhelming fortune, by delivering us miraculously as He delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace.
And there are times when the miracle is not in our deliverance, but in our bearing of suffering, and in what springs from it. There are times when the Great Fire must take its course, when the bitter cup may not be taken from our lips.
But from the difficult times, as from all times, may spring the greater glory and good of God, if we have vision enough to see the new city beyond the old.
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June 20, 1982
Broadcast Number 2,757