A couple weeks ago Aaron asked a question about how we disciple our families. The time that it would take to give a thoughtful answer to that question has, in part, kept me from replying. I will make this initial brief reply — and it is the church. Over the last several years I have invested a lot of time in the church so that my family has a place to hear the word of God preached faithfully and to be encouraged by others. I know that this isn’t the answer that Aaron was necessarily looking for, but then I’m the one who refuses to name my children in this very public venue. I may say more, but at least I’ve posted. — Furthermore, I haven’t had time to post because I have been discipling my family!
Thomas Hardy, an english author, wrote one of my favorite novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge. He also wrote the following poem where he put in words some people’s emotional yearning for certainty about God. Even the existence of an unjust God, according to the poem, “Hap,” would at least explain suffering in the world. But Hardy, at least in this poem, finds no answer, and certainly no comfort, in God. Therefore, “joy lies slain” and hope does not bloom. Without a God to give meaning to life there is nothing to give meaning to the “pain” and the “blisses” of our piligrimage. Here is the poem:
Hap
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: ”Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
Christians, of course, don’t need to despair. After all, there is a God and He is good. He has made us to know Him and to love Him. He has given us good gifts to enjoy. Though the world is full of all sorts of “pains” we know those pains are not God’s fault–we live in a fallen world, where people choose to go after their own desires instead of God’s perfect will. The Christian’s “pilgrimage” is one of bliss and pain, no doubt–but that bliss and pain has a purpose. In our pain we are being sanctified to look more and more like our Savior, Jesus Christ and in our bliss we are given a foretaste of eternal delights.
Do you wonder whether there is a purpose, a meaning to the struggles of your life? Do you wonder if you have a purpose? The answer to this question is theological: you were created by God for His glory. How can you do this? Love Him (Matt. 22:37); obey Him (John 14:23); trust Him (1John 5:3-4); thank Him (Psalm 100).
I’ve been in Oregon for a couple of weeks and while I was there I had a chance to visit a huge used bookstore, Powell’s. Obviously, most authors who write today–fiction or non-fiction–do not intend to bring glory to God. For that matter, they have little or no interest in addressing issues of sin and salvation. This was not always the case.
Go back 150 years and American literature was soaked (some would say mired) in these biblical themes. One writer deserves a lot of credit for changing this, for “liberating” literature from the shackles of Christianity–the poet Walt Whitman. In his groundbreaking volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, he cut the cord between salvation and literature, exalting in man’s independence, discussing more practical matters–the here and now. Here are a few lines from the end of a poem entitled, appropriately, “Song of Myself”:
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
If you want to see him again, don’t look in heaven–or hell–just look under the sole of your shoes–that’s all we are; that’s all there is to life. Whitman’s poetry was really revolutionary–though today his theme of personal independence is old hat.
So that’s a little poetry for Friday–a poem about independence. As Christians, we know, however, that we are finally and completely dependent upon God. And as much as we may try to exert our independence, it is a futile effort, we were made to know Him and obey Him.
Peguy is well aware that the greatest virtue is love, and that next to love, faith is the more significant of the virtues. It is a pilgrimage of faith — not hope. And so what Peguy has done is to portray the two dominant virtues as mature women and hope as a child. Faith and love will have the honor that is due to mature women. Yet, the irony is that a mature woman is motivated in life to live and to work for her children. (Peguy goes on to portray this beautifully later in the poem from the perspective of a father.) In this image in the poem, Faith and Love are holding the hands of Hope, and like a child swinging in its parents’ hands, Hope is physically led by the adults. But what leads the parent to swing the child? It is the hope for life, for the realization of faith, for the continuance of love.
It is Friday and time for a dose of poetry. Aaron is away, but in light of his sermon this past Sunday that included an emphasis on faith, hope, and love, I would like to offer some poetry on the same. The poet that I will quote is a French poet of the early 20th century Charles Peguy. His poetry is nearly always religious in theme but dominated frequently by French and Roman Catholic flavors. Not probably the best things to recommend him to this crowd. I think that I have referred to him before though and didn’t get in too much trouble. I think that his long narrative style poem entitled The Portal of the Mystery of Hope (Eerdmans, 1996) is one of the most beautiful sustained reflections on hope and the other two cardinal virtues of faith and love.
The little hope moves forward in between her two older sisters [faith and charity] and one scarcely notices her.
Lost in her sisters’ skirts.
And they willingly believe that it’s the two older ones who drag the youngest along by the hand.
In the middle.
Between them.
To make her walk this rocky path of salvation.
They are blind who cannot see otherwise.
That it’s she in the middle who leads her older sisters along.
The English poet William Cowper is actually known to most of us as the author of some hymns we currently sing. Among the hymns he wrote were “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” and “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” He was also for some time a close friend of John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace.” Near the end of his life though he struggled with severe depression and doubted his salvation.
In one of his lengthier poems Table Talk, he makes reference to religious themes in poetry. Cowper’s poetical sensibilities found little use for much of it. Here is a selection:
Pity Religion has so seldom found
A skilful guide into poetic ground!
The flowers would spring where’er she deign’d to stray,
And every muse attend her in her way.
Virtue indeed meets many a rhyming friend,
And many a compliment politely penn’d;
But, unattired in that becoming vest
Religion weaves for her, and half undress’d,
Stands in the desert shivering and forlorn,
A wintry figure, like a wither’d thorn.
Neither right doctrine nor authentic religious experiences by themselves can make good hymns or good poetry. They are essential, but cannot stand alone. A skilful guide is necessary for both artistic endeavors.
Aaron has given his inaugural entry for Friday poetry at the 3ABC blog. I just want everyone to know that this was NOT my idea, though those who know me well may think that I protest too much. In truth, this was all Aaron’s idea. I happily embrace it and lead off with one of the most sublime poets the USA has ever produced. Robert Frost is our American Horace. If you would like to know why, read Randall Jarrell and countless others. I offer not one of his well known poems nor even one of his best, but still, a choice morsel:
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Frost understands that nature cannot be romanticized, nor sentimentalized, but seeks to appreciate the gift of life despite its brevity and ultimate demise. The response to Frost is of course that we receive the gift of life we have and that a new and incorruptiple seed will one day provide life that does not sink, as it did in Eden, to grief.
