Category Archives: Wesley

An Arrow Through the Air

I’m slowly reading the letters of John Wesley. I found these on line at The Wesley Center. I have downloaded the first two volumes and formatted them for a maximization of trade-off between easy reading and concise printing, and printed them. I’m thus reading them from my printed copy. I found this interesting piece today.

“…I am afraid of nothing more than of growing old too soon, of having my body worn out before my soul is past childhood. Would it not be terrible to have the wheels of life stand still, when we had scarce started for the goal; before the work of the day was half done, to have the night come, wherein no one can work? I shiver at the thought of losing my strength before I have found [it]; to have my senses fail ere I have a stock of rational pleasures, my blood cold ere my heart is warmed with virtue! Strange, to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark behind them, without our being able to trace them in our improvement!

Wesley wrote this on 27 September 1730 to Miss Ann Granville. This is part of the “Cyrus-Aspasia” letters, not printed in most early collections of his letters, which are believed to be coded affectionate (if not love) letters between Wesley and the young widow Mary Granville Pendarves. Ann was Mary’s younger sister, and Wesley wrote her as well. In these words by the founder of Methodism and, more importantly, the driving force behind the 18th Century revival in England, I find much to think about and much to inspire. I may take a few days to discuss this.

First up is his thought “Strange to look back on a train of years that have passed, ‘as an arrow through the air,’ without leaving any mark….” Is that not a perfect description of the average person’s life? Oh, we all leave marks behind us. As a genealogy hobbyist who has found lots of these marks left by otherwise unknown ancestors, I know this. But for the most part most people have no impact beyond their immediate family and perhaps a few close acquaintances. How apt Wesley’s metaphor is. An arrow moves through the air at great speed and for great distances. It has an effect at the end of its journey, but the territory it passes through is not affected except for a momentary disturbance of unseen gases.

So could any of us look back on years passed and wonder, “What have I accomplished in the last [X years, or Y decades]? Has that much time really passed? They seemed full at the time. Why do I have such a sense of non-accomplishment?” Many people want to have an impact on our world: help someone, teach someone, train-up someone, create something, discover something, improve something. Yet, many more people don’t give a thought to any of this, worrying instead about eight hours work, dinner on the table, and television all evening. Quite a dichotomy. Unfortunately there are likely many more people who fit the latter description than the former. And many of the former devise no game plan for doing more than momentarily disturbing unseen gases

For those who, like Wesley, want to accomplish so much that they wish “the wheels of life stand still”, a game plan for accomplishing influence is necessary. I pray that God would help me to develop that game plan, and have that influence.

Leisure and I…

One of John Wesley’s most famous quotes is, “Leisure and I have taken leave of one another.” I found this quote in his letter to his older brother, Samuel Wesley Jun. The letter was written 5 December 1726. Those familiar with the chronology of Wesley’s life will recognize this as very early, during the Oxford Holy Club days, long before the Wesleyan revival, long before his missionary time in America, long before doctrines developed that would become the foundations of one of the greatest Christian movements of all times. Wesley was just twenty-three years old when he wrote this. Sixty-four years of fruitful ministry lay ahead.

I don’t know if Wesley might have written this many times in his works, rather than just this once. Possibly this was sort of a life motto for him, possibly this shows up regularly in his writings (which I will find out over the years as I read more of them). But I find it most interesting he wrote this so early in his life, and that he seemed to have done what he said. Even a cursory biography shows that he was not a man of leisure, and seldom did what we would consider leisurely things. I don’t know that he ever took vacations. His occupation caused him to have to work on the Sabbath, so did he take another day of the week as a day of rest, or did he just plow right on with his work? Did he have any sort of a weekend as we know it? Of course, the times he lived in were much more work oriented than ours. The four day work week was unheard of—actually, the five day work week was unheard of. Six days a week was the norm, and I imagine some workers found themselves working all seven just to make ends meet. The European concept of a month-long vacation was unthinkable. Even the American concept of two weeks of vacation, with a trip to the beach or the mountains, was something maybe the idle rich could afford, but no one else. Yes, Wesley’s taking leave of leisure was quite a bit different than it would be today.

So how does this affect us now? If Wesley gave up so much leisure and accomplished so much, what of us, who in the 21st century have much we want to accomplish? If we take leave of leisure, we will be branded “type A personality”, whatever that is, and looked down upon by most of those we encounter. But so what? Most of them have nothing they want to accomplish beyond a good bracket in the NCAA tournament, or calling the automated tee-time reservation system the very second reservations for a new day become available. If they don’t want to accomplish much, why should that deter me?

I am impressed that Wesley established this pattern of intensive ministry long before he accomplished most of his life goals. Aldersgate Street is about twelve years in the future. The revival followed that. Fifty years of fruitful ministry accompanied the revival. But those twelve years of having taken leave of leisure must have somehow been essential for that to happen. Again, Wesley was twenty-three when he made that statement. I seem to be thirty-three years behind him. Yet the need to accomplish much outside my chosen profession didn’t hit me until somewhat late in life. Have I time to take leave of leisure and accomplish something? And how does this mesh with what I wrote of Emerson’s words, “There is time enough for all that I must do”?

No answers, only questions to be pondered and hopefully answered in the next couple of months.