Ride Your Problems

Carol and I took in the Village Theater Musical Showboat. It was a delightful drift through the 1890’s when river boats provided entertainment on the Mississippi. You would probably recognize songs like “Old Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ dat Man.”

Besides the beautiful songs, terrific staging, and talented actors, the story line floated you a couple messages.

The first is a story about love and marriage. There are 5 marriages depicted in the play: The owner of the showboat, the lead actor and actress, the comedy dance team, the African-American workers, and the owners’ daughter who marries the flashy and talented riverboat “gentleman.” Every marriage has its problems: The owner puts up with his domineering and demanding wife. The lead actor and actress have to run when the local police discover that she is mixed-race and come to arrest her…only to see their marriage dissolve in Chicago. The comedy dance team with running ad-hominem banter, cracking jokes at each other’s expense, surprisingly stick together and eventually make it big in Hollywood. The young lovers are married, much to the dismay of the riverboat owner’s wife and the delight of the riverboat owner. They wind up in Chicago where the gambler loses his shirt and deserts the love of his life and their child. The only marriage that seems to be solid and encouraging is that of the African American couple, because she “can’t help lovin dat man”. What do you learn? Every marriage has problems and challenges. Every marriage, even with the most auspicious beginning, faces extreme challenges and problems. Marriages stick together in spite of the problems and fall apart because of the problems. Marriages that last find ways to deal with the irritations and annoyances introduced by the partner, and their deep loyalty binds them together in spite of the pressures that threaten to pull them apart. The challenges serve to either melt them together or split them apart. Love is painful but powerful. It is even sometimes very sad. But, true love holds even the most painful marriage together. Marriage is an institution where two imperfect people struggle together through many difficulties to forge a union that withstands the tests of life.

The second lesson is about life. Life goes on and you can’t stop it any more than you can stop the Mississippi. The young couple marry, go to Chicago, have a child, and raise the child. The story ends with the child back at the showboat and falling in love, thus the cycle starts all over again. Life is like the Mississippi, Old Man River, who just keeps rolling along…through good and bad, through problems and pain and joy, celebration and challenge. You can’t stop it. You can only ride it out. Likewise, we can’t escape the problems, but we can ride on them. Apply what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 to your marriage, and ride on the problem to God’s grace.… 2CO 4:7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
And, in 2 Corinthians 12….he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.