He started strong, graduating from Yale (which his grandfather founded). He decided he wanted to go into education. As it turns out, he was a failure as a teacher. He was too easy on his students.
So he got a law degree to become a lawyer. He was too generous with his clients and never pursued those cases that brought good fees.
He then decided to be a dry merchant. He failed at that too. He kept giving credit to customers and not charging enough for his goods to make a profit.
During this time he took up poetry. He was actually published a few times but never collected many royalties, so he considered himself a failure as a poet.
And so he decided to become a minister, went to Harvard Divinity School and was ordained a minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. But he became a bit too vocal about prohibition against slavery which upset some of his congregation. He was forced to resign. He was a failure as a minister.
So John decided to get into politics. He was nominated as the Abolition Party candidate for governor. He lost. He then ran for congress with the Free Soil Party. He lost again. He was a failure as a politician.
The Civil War came along and he volunteered as a chaplain. At 76, he couldn't keep up so after two weeks he was forced to quit. He couldn't even make it as a chaplain.
He finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk with the Treasury Department. He wasn't very good at that either. His heart wasn't into it.
John Pierpont died a failure. He accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. On a small memorial stone over his grave the words read: POET PREACHER PHILOSOPHER PHILANTHRIPIST.
Like most of our lives, it takes perspective to see the purpose in our suffering, or to see success in what felt like a life of failure. John's commitments to social justice, his active engagement of the great issues of his time, and his desire to serve were all marks of a life well lived. Looking back, education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and slavery was abolished. And John, in a small way, was involved in all of it. God used him, and his failures for his purposes.
Every year in December, all of us celebrate John's success. We carry in our hearts and minds a life long memorial to him. It's a song. Not about Santa Claus or angels. It's a simple song about the joy of whizzing through the cold dark winter's gloom in a sleigh pulled by a horse, with friends laughing all the way.
John Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells.
"To write a song that stands for the simplest of joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know, a song about something they've never done, but can imagine, a song that every one of us large and small can hoot out the moment the cord is struck on the piano, and the cord is struck in our spirit, well that's not failure! One snowy afternoon in a deep winter, John Pierpont penned the words as a small gift to his family and friends and congregation and in doing so he left a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of joy."
Who knows what fingerprint you are leaving on this world of ours? Some of us might at times see our lives as insignificant, or maybe that we are failures. Don't lose faith. God has an elaborate orchestra of which you are playing a part. If you make sure you are "in tune" with His will, in time, you will hear the song.
Rhythm
1 comment:
Fantastic story of perspective and hope. Thanks for sharing!!
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