The Glad Game

Statue of Pollyanna in Littleton, NH. (Photo found on internet)

(This is my homily to be delivered at a service this weekend. The texts are Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; 2 Tim. 2:8-15; Psalm 66:1-4 and 16-20; and Luke 17:11-19.)

As a young girl growing up on a tropical Malaysian island with hot muggy weather, I loved to lie on the couch with the fan set on “high,” and read. Constantly foraging for good books, I discovered on our shelves the old, hardback books that had been my mother’s favorite reading when she was a young girl, way back in the 1930s. They were gifts in my literary life.

Gene Stratton-Porter’s book, Freckles, tells the story of an orphan boy living in the Limberlost swamp of eastern Indiana around 1900.  Heidi by Johanna Spyri tells the story of an orphan girl living in the Swiss alps with her grandfather. And I was enchanted with Eleanor Porter’s book, Pollyanna, about an orphan girl sent to live with her stern and starchy aunt.  Why I was drawn to stories about orphans is a question to ponder on another day. The theme that strikes me, though, is that these stories all portrayed young people who viewed the world through lenses of hope, despite hardship.

Let me focus for a few moments on the story of Pollyanna.  In order to navigate the loss and difficulties of life, Pollyanna played a game called the “Glad Game.” It was simple: in every difficult circumstance, look for something you can be glad about. The Glad Game had been invented by Pollyanna’s father one Christmas when she hoped to find a doll in the missionary barrel they had received, and instead she found only a pair of crutches. Well, said Pollyanna’s father in her moment of disappointment, Pollyanna could be glad because “We don’t need to use them!”

Even as a child I could see that the Glad Game could really work. When my schoolmate Beverly lost her temper during a game of tag at recess, and she grabbed me by the arm and bit me, I could go home and show the bruise to my mom, but then say, “I’m glad she didn’t bite so hard that it bled.” It actually made me feel better to think of it in that way. Or when I desperately wanted a horse, but keeping a horse in our backyard on a tropical island was impossible, I could say, “I’m glad that at least we have our dogs.” A dog didn’t take the place of a horse, but when you play the Glad Game, the point is to find something to be glad about, even if it doesn’t make up for what disappointed you.

Sometime during my growing up years, I became aware that people make fun of Pollyanna. That sorely disappointed me. Being referred to as a “Pollyanna” can mean that you are naïve, shallow and unrealistic, willfully refusing to admit to the hurts and complexities of life, annoyingly optimistic.

But I never perceived the literary Pollyanna in that way. Pollyanna knew life was hard. She’d had to wear hand-me-downs from the missionary barrel, and that was embarrassing. She’d lost her parents, and felt her loss keenly. And she was living with a relative upon whom she’d been foisted, who didn’t want her. The lack of nurture in her little life was painful. Yet there was something resilient, a conviction that there was meaning in life, and that the meaning could be glimpsed in these little moments for which she was grateful. More than anything, the Glad Game was Pollyanna’s way of expressing hope. And I think it was the hope in her Glad Game that drew me so strongly to her story.

Vaclav Havel, the poet and former president of the Czech Republic, said: "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

As we consider our scripture readings today, there runs through them all a common thread. That is the thread of gladness, of Hope.

When Jeremiah wrote to the exiles in Babylon and told them to “build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce,” he was calling them to move beyond their loss, beyond their decimated lives, to deliberately choose actions that expressed hope. The Hebrew exiles had suffered greatly in all kinds of ways, but they could still find reasons to be glad. Building houses and planting gardens were ways of making sense in the midst of loss, ways of sowing seeds of hope for the future.

When the psalmist sang, “All the earth will worship You,
And will sing praises to You;
They will sing praises to Your name,” he could not have been expressing reality. The world was not all singing praises to God. Being alive was a constant struggle to survive, and the gods of the tribes around them were not kind. Nevertheless, the psalmist was expressing gladness, describing a time when things would make sense, regardless of what it looked like in the era in which he sang his lyrics.

Consider the ten “lepers,” as we have thought of them. When all ten of these men with skin disease took Jesus at His word and trotted off to see the priest for a verdict of healing, they weren’t just expressing naïve optimism. They headed for that priest with gladness, scampering down the road full of the HOPE that Jesus would heal them. Notice that when they left Jesus, they hadn’t even been healed yet!

And when Paul wrote of the hardships of imprisonment, he was practically playing Pollyanna’s Glad Game himself! Somehow things would make sense, Paul was confident, regardless of how his own life would turn out. Listen to his words:

“For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory.

It is a trustworthy statement:

For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him;
If we endure, we will also reign with Him;
If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.”

Paul lists the challenges of his life, and they are depressing: I die. I endure. I fail. I am faithless. 

Then he proceeds to express gratitude for the blessing he connects to each one of those losses, which might be expressed thus: But I am glad that I will live. But I am glad that I will reign. But I am glad that He remains faithful.

Much has been reported of psychological research on happiness in the past decade. Some of the notable findings we’ve read have shed light on expressions of gratitude—essentially, the Glad Game. These studies have indicated what the apostle Paul--and the fictional Pollyanna--knew: expressing gratitude significantly increases a person’s happiness. Research subjects who wrote letters of gratitude to someone who had been especially kind to them were happier. Subjects who kept a gratitude journal were happier. Subjects who did a focused gratitude exercise daily were more likely to report reaching out to help another person. 

In the book, Pollyanna drew her entire town into playing the Glad Game with her. The Glad Game begets gratitude in others, just as it did in the fictional story. Gratitude multiplies happiness, both in the individuals expressing gladness, and in those around them. When we find something to be glad about in our lives, we find kindness, and healing, and resilience, and the ability to forgive.

This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Ps. 118:24)  When we enter into the Glad Game, we find meaning amidst otherwise puzzling circumstances. We acknowledge that we are grateful for blessings beyond our power, thankful to Someone Who is beyond our understanding. We are more likely to find meaning in our lives. When we express gratitude… we find Hope.