A Prayer in the Dark
There are those who believe that the "wrath of God" has nothing to do with how God feels within himself—it isn't a divine experience but simply a divine decision to allow the inevitable consequences of sin to follow. I tend strongly to believe that it is a divine experience that leads to a divine response. I think God's wrath is his love taking the form of chastisement; much as a loving parent is affected by unacceptable behaviour in a child and moves to express love in some form of chastisement. Chastisement is never lovelessness; it is the form love takes, a way love chooses to express itself under the right circumstances. Sometimes that means the parent will choose to allow the child to endure the inevitable consequences of his actions—that too is chastisement; that too is the expression of "wrath" but it is only one expression of wrath and not the entire story.
In any case, that's not what I want to say in this piece. I want to share with you the thoughts of G.K Chesterton that he expressed in his poem: A Prayer in the Dark. I'm sure I haven't got the depth of it but the general drift seems fairly clear (I'm open to correction on that). Robert Browning and Chesterton had much in common but they certainly had this in common: their gallant and optimistic view of life; their willingness to take life as it came and their refusal to let their trouble and dark times obliterate the sun or turn the entire world sour! They didn't allow the hours to obliterate the years and they wouldn't allow their own hurt to make them peevish about the good fortune of others. They believed fervently that those who moaned all the time were telling truth about life in this world but they believed just as fervently that the truthful moaners weren't seeing or telling all the truth.
Chesterton was glad that his dark times—times he sometimes thought were times of wrath ("If I must travail in a night of wrath")—he was glad his own dark night had no power to dim the stars or make life harder for a moth and that no curse of his had the power to wither a flower. He embraced the trouble as his own and wouldn't believe that because he was in the dark that the entireworld should be in darkness. There is great strength and balance here but strength and balance don't appear alone—they're part of a grander character and make-up. Chesterton was cheerful, friendly, open, and had the capacity to enjoy his food [when he wasn't spilling it all over himself while he passionately engaged in conversation with his friends] and all the other pleasantries of life. In short, Chesterton wouldn't allow life to make him blind as well as bitter or spiteful.
He was able to take pleasure in the good fortune of others even while he was in a dark night, travailing in a night of wrath. He didn't want God to make their lives miserable because he was in misery. If things had got so bad that he murdered himself he would still want God to take care of the grass on his grave and he (so to speak) gave God permission to ignore his own whining and to get on with feeding the world ("pity me not; but let the world be fed"). If in his life he snarled and begged he asked God to help him recognise in the fruitful seasons and the blessings of the world that God was indeed ignoring his whimpering (he calls that "the shining silence of the scorn of God") and blessing others. The Londoner had learned when everyone was saying the sun was darkened that it was shining brightly.
This is gallant living indeed and Chesterton learned it from the most gallant of us all—Jesus! Jesus, who knew that the hopes of humanity rested in him, while hanging on the torture tree sharing the wrath of God with his sinful family, feeling it as no other human could feel it, was still saying (Acts 2:25-28):
"I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will live in hope, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence."
Chesterton puts it in his own wonderful way; in Jesus' night of darkness he could still hear "all the crickets sing" and smile. Is that not life? It is!
This much, O heaven—if I should brood or rave,
Pity me not; but let the world be fed,
Yea, in my madness if I strike me dead,
Heed you the grass that grows upon my grave.
If I dare snarl between this sun and sod,
Whimper and clamour, give me grace to own,
In sun and rain and fruit in season shown,
The shining silence of the scorn of God.
Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,
If I must travail in a night of wrath,
Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,
Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.
Men say the sun was darkened: yet I had
Thought it beat brightly, even on—Calvary:
And He that hung upon the Torturing Tree
Heard all the crickets singing, and was glad.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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