Virginia Brandt Berg (1898-1968)
I WOULD LIKE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING THAT INTERESTED ME MANY YEARS AGO when just a child. I attended the circus and before my eyes there were three rings in full action. I can remember it so well! The acrobats swinging and flying, leaping through the air! But more than anything there was something that interested me in the third ring.
I SAW A GIRL AND BOY FLINGING OUT ACROSS THE RING BRIGHTLY COLORED MISSILES, and they had gone a little way in space and then they would return and come back again, straight back into the very hands that had flung them out. No matter which direction they were thrown, back they came swiftly, and the young actors would catch them as they curved back.
THE CHILD WATCHED IN AMAZEMENT! WHAT MADE THOSE THINGS COME BACK AGAIN? What made them curve in their courses and circle right back to where they began? They left that girl's hands, and back to her hands they came! Then I heard someone beside me say -- and it was the first time I had ever heard the word --
THEY ARE BOOMERANGS! Well, I've heard the word many times since then after I tucked it away in my childish mind: I had to have it explained to me when I got home! But as I say, I've seen it so many times in life since then,
BECAUSE LIFE IS ITSELF A BOOMERANG. EVERYTHING YOU DO COMES BACK some time, somewhere. God's Word says, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Every word you fling out comes back some day.
I BELIEVE THAT EVEN MY THOUGHTS COME BACK UPON ME, for thoughts are things after all. It's just an uncanny way the boomerang has of describing a circle, that of returning back to the very one that threw it out.
AND THAT IS THE WAY IT IS WITH THE LAW OF SPIRITUAL GRAVITY, the law of retribution, just as fixed as life itself: That whatever a man casts out in the world shall return again on his own life.
HE THROWS OUT TO THE WORLD THE BREAD OF KINDNESS AND IT RETURNS after many years, such a blessing on his own life! He casts forth a curse and there curves back to him a greater curse in the later years. You say, "I don't know about my boomerang, yours strikes one way and mine another." But as sure as you live, God's Word is true.
GOD'S WORD NEVER FAILS, AND WHATEVER YOU DO WILL COME BACK TO YOU. I know that kind words spoken years ago gathered momentum and I've reaped great blessings for them just in these later years of my life.
AND IT IS THE SAME FOR YOU TODAY. YOU'RE REAPING LOVE AND GRATITUDE FROM SOME FAR-FLUNG BOOMERANG that years ago you flung out. It's just the same. You take a parent -- the other day I was noticing -- who lives near me; irritable and impatient. And then I heard the child railing back in irritability and impatience and I thought, "It's just the boomerang coming back to that parent."
SOME TIME AGO I MET A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD LOST FAITH IN GOD, and in our conversation you could hear the whirl of the boomerang, for years ago he began reading the type of literature in his own home -- that was there by his own parents' hands -- which leads only to loss of faith in everything.
SOME TIME AGO AT AN ALTAR -- AND THIS SURELY I CAN NEVER FORGET -- was a dear one kneeling there and praying, a mother. She told how it was really a boomerang that a boy of hers had gone so wrong because she had not brought him up in the way in which he should go.
AND THE CHILD'S LIFE, LIKE METAL WHEN IT'S HOT, HAD FLOWN INTO THE MOLD AND HARDENED THERE, and now that he was a man she couldn't seem to deal with him. But it had been because of her own life in those early years, her indifference towards God, and no prayer in the home.
NOW THE BOOMERANG HAD COME BACK AND SHE SAID, "OH, AT THAT TIME IT WAS SO DIFFERENT! I THOUGHT IT WOULD NEVER COME BACK TO ME, and I wasn't afraid, and I thought I was just having a good time, and I used to say it was nonsense about these things coming back." But she said, "I'm hearing now the clink of handcuffs, the shutting of prison doors over my boy, and I couldn't help but think, as I sat in the deputy's office, that I heard in the distance just the return on my own life and what I had sowed in that boy's life."
SOME TIME AGO IN A HOSPITAL IN MIAMI, FLORIDA, I CALLED ONE MORNING IN TWO DIFFERENT SICK ROOMS, one room where Marie Smith was lying sick. There were flowers in abundance, and all sorts of cards and beautiful little gifts that had been sent into her room, and she was just surrounded by those thoughtful little offers of kindness.
BUT THAT HAD BEEN HER LIFE, FOR SHE HAD SOWN LOVE AND THOUGHTFULNESS THROUGH THE YEARS into the lives of these others, and now it was coming back to her in her hour of need and desperate sickness in that hospital.
IN THE OTHER ROOM WAS LYING A WOMAN ALONE, BITTER: SUSPICION ON EVERY FEATURE OF HER FACE. SELFISHNESS HAD RUINED HER LIFE: Selfish, suspicious, critical, and there she was lying with her face turned to the wall. She had built around her life a friendlessness, a coldness, a hardness of heart and selfishness, and now she was shut in alone in the time of her death.
OH, WHAT A DIFFERENCE IN THOSE TWO ROOMS, WHERE THE BOOMERANG CAME BACK IN DIFFERENT WAYS! In Proverbs 26:27 God's Word says, "Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return unto him." And then in Ecclesiastes 11:1, God's Word says,
"CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS: FOR THOU SHALT FIND IT AFTER MANY DAYS." Oh, the one that lives unselfishly, caring for the needy and lifting the burdens, easing the pain, supplying the need, you surely will see that boomerang come back in blessing upon them some day!
GOD'S WORD MAKES IT VERY PLAIN ABOUT REAPING WHAT YOU SOW. If the reaping doesn't come in fullness here in this life, it will come in the next life. Except ye repent, the reaping certainly is coming.
BUT YOU CAN REPENT! GOD'S WORD SAYS, "EXCEPT YE REPENT, YE SHALL LIKEWISE PERISH." But God's Word also says, "If you confess your sins, he is faithful and just to forgive you your sins." God's Word never returns to Him void, and it shall prosper in that whereunto He sent it.
IF YOU WILL TURN TO GOD'S WORD AND READ IT, AND LIVE IN IT, WHAT A BOOMERANG IT WILL BE UPON YOUR OWN LIFE! What a blessing it will be! Lay up your treasure in Heaven now, and what a glorious boomerang it will be in the days of your old age! God bless you and bring this lesson home to heart. God's still on the Throne, and prayer changes things.