Sun 9:30a Class; 10:30a Worship; 11:35a Communion
Bible Bites
Stopping the Clock
We had made some progress in the dinner when I reminded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham. ‘True,’ he replied. ‘I’ll redeem it at once.... Now, concerning Miss Havisham.... There appeared upon the scene... a certain man.... This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time, but all the susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him.... The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote a letter—’ ‘Which she received,’ I stuck in, ‘when she was dressing for her marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?’ ‘At the hour and minute,’ said Herbert, nodding, ‘at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since looked upon the light of day.’
This excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (New York: Signet, 1961, 195–198) is a classic illustration of what Dickens did best: he created characters who personified universal feelings and emotions. When Miss Havisham learns on her wedding day that she has been jilted, her response was to literally stop the clock, and for the next fifty years live in the pain of her rejection. She closed all the drapes so that daylight could not enter the house; she never took off the wedding dress she had already put on when the letter arrived from her former fiancé; she had just put on one shoe, so for the rest of her life she hobbled about with one shoe on and one shoe off; the wedding cake that had already been placed on the banquet table, she refused to let be removed (over the years, however, the cake was removed, crumb by crumb, as spiders and mice nested in it and ate away at it).
It is in the very unbelievability of Miss Havisham’s response, that the memorability of this character is found. I’ve never known anyone to literally react the way she did to rejection or a broken heart, but I have known people to metaphorically stop the clock on their life. Take Jacob, for instance. After being led to believe that his son Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, he “tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son’” (Genesis 37.34–35).
When there is a God who can “make us to lie down in green pastures” even after we have received a crushing blow, isn’t it a foolish and utter waste of our life to choose decaying cake, tattered dresses, a single shoe, mice, spiders, and gloom over the peace that passes understanding (2 Corinthians 1.3–4, Philippians 4.6–7)? Our name may not be Havisham, but our life can be a sham.
We ought to remember that the potential for the greater tragedy never lies in what life can do to us on the outside, but rather, in what we can do to ourselves on the inside.
“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34.18).
