The Wilderness Way #5

Facing the abyss of a second world war in 1939, King George VI of Great Britain read a poem written in 1908 by Minnie Louise Haskins, an American lecturer at the London School of Economics, in a Christmas Eve address to the nation.

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.

And he replied, “Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God

Trod gladly into the night

He led me towards the hills

And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!

What need our human life to know

If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things

Both high and low,

God hideth his intention.

We do not stand on the abyss of a new world war (at least I think not), but we are caught in the quagmire of an elongated struggle with the forces of terrorism and darkness. Ours is a world of darkness pierced with the moans of hunger, homelessness and hopelessness. As we step into the New Year our Lord speaks to us. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

This is not a time for silly-minded optimism. It is a time for genuine biblical hope; the kind of hope that springs from the steps of a refugee couple clutching a new born baby. The image of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt is an apt one for the beginning of the New Year. It is not offered in a sense of gloom but rather, with a genuine sense of hope and majesty.

God is at work in a refugee couple. God is at work in our churches, communities and world. The voice from the throne cries out over our darkness, “See, the home of God is among mortals.” (Revelation 21:3) The promise of Exodus is again with a pilgrim church plunging through the wilderness of 2009. “The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.” (Exodus 13:21-22)

Whatever our planning for the future holds, it must hold room for the leading of the Spirit. Whatever our struggles of the present involve, they must involve the presence of God. Whatever our actions entail, they must entail the way of Christ. Wesley’s covenant prayer for the New Year would inform us and most assuredly launch us in the year of our Lord.

I am no longer my own, but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;

Put me to doing, put me to suffering.

Let me be employed by you or laid aside by you,

Enabled for you or brought low by you.

Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and heartily yield all things

to your pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

You are mine, and I am yours. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,

Let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen. (John Wesley)

By: Bishop Mike Lowry On 1/9/2009

Topics: Bishop Columns