“Jacob’s Ladder at Charing Cross?”

PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “Jacob’s Ladder at Charing Cross?”

     Author Philip Yancey tells of an experience playing chess with a master player.  He explains his rapid realization that no matter what move he made, no matter what strategy he chose, the master seemed to turn his play around to serve his own purposes.  If the truth be realized, all of us would identify with Francis Thompson, who felt the same way.  He made a lot of moves in his life that were disastrous.  He spent his life running away from God and seeking to find pleasure and fulfillment in all the wrong things.  But even during his days of drug abuse, living on the streets near England’s Charing Cross, and sleeping nights down by the river Thames, he was not alone.  He wrote a famous poem describing how he was pursued and lovingly sought by the Hound of Heaven-God, through His Son the Lord Jesus Christ!  Readers of English poetry know all about this famous poem.  You may even recall Richard Burton’s famous reading of this 189-line poem.  Francis Thompson was a child of opportunity.  His father wanted him to go to medical school and become a doctor, or to study at Oxford University.  But instead Francis was lured into the world of opiates, in the late 1800’s in England.  It was this addiction that interrupted his education and left him homeless and hopeless for several years of his life.  But even during his days of addiction he was being pursued by Christ, whom he would later, after becoming a Christian, call the Hound of Heaven.  Here are a few lines from his Immortal poem:

I fled Him down the nights and down the days

I fled Him down the arches of the years.

I fled Him down the labyrinthine way of my own mind:

And in the midst of tears.

I hid from Him, and under running laughter

Up vistaed hopes I sped

Down titantic glooms of chasmed fears

From those strong feet that followed, I fled

For though I knew His love that followed

Yet I was sore adread

That having Him I would have naught else beside.

(BUT HE ENDS IT, AFTER SEVERAL MORE VERSES THAT I HAVE OMITTED)

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He whom thou seekest!

     After his conversion, and change of life, Thompson wrote another poem expressing the same kind of pursuit that he found Jesus Christ to have for him all the days of his running.  This poem is called In No Strange Land. 

Oh world invisible, we view thee,

Oh world intangible, we touch thee,

Oh world unknowable, we know thee,

In apprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean?

The eagle plunge to find the air-

That we ask the stars in motion

If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where wheeling systems darken,

And our benumbed conceiving soars! –

The drift of pinions, would we harken,

Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places-

Turn but a stone and start a wing!

Tis ye, tis your estranged faces,

That miss the many splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)

Cry-and upon thy so sore loss

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder

Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul; My daughter,

Cry-clinging to Heaven by the hems;

And lo, Christ is walking on the water,

Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Thompson found that the Hound of Heaven, lowered Jacob’s Ladder right into the drug infested homeless situation he had chosen for himself there in the area surrounding England’s Charing Cross.  And late night’s spent sleeping homeless and defeated, overwhelmed with guilt, shame, and failure. He was awakened only to find Christ walking toward him on the water, not of the Sea of Galilee-but Thames!  Today’s message is words from the Hound of Heaven.  He is asking us the Soul Winning Question.  Do you not pursue at any cost the lost one that is of great value to you?  Of course, we do!  Let a child we love be lost.  We gather the entire neighborhood; all the police force; the media to spare no cost in recovering the lost child.  Even when a dog or a cat that we love is lost we print posters, offer rewards, go from house to house, neighborhood to neighborhoods searching diligently.  And we should!  Today’s message from Jesus calls us to the ultimate search of those that are lost!  Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “If there be any one point in which the Christian Church ought to keep its fervor at a white heat, it is concerning soul-winning.  If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate Luke warmness, it is the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world!”