As we approach a new year, mindful of the joys and sorrows, highlights and challenges of the previous year, I offer two poems, the first of which is used as a hymn (scroll down for full poem by Minnie Louise Haskins).
This, This is the God we adore, our faithful unchangeable friend,
Whose love is as great as their power, and neither knows measure nor end.
‘Tis Jesus the first and the last, whose spirit will guide us safe home.
We’ll praise him for all that is past, and trust him for all that’s to come.
– Charles Wesley
And the opening words of ‘The Gate of the Year/God Knows’, written by Minnie Louise Haskins, once a Methodist missionary, and a retired academic from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). You can find the full poem below.
’God Knows’
And 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 out 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”.
Both poems remind us that whilst we do not know what is to come, the faithfulness of God in the past and the present, enables us to go forward confidently – not because we ‘know everything will be fine’, but because we trust God that we do not walk alone. God will never leave us, and the people of God can be our earthly companions in the journey. As we trust God, we will discover that God fills our life with everlasting love, and each day, gives us strength enough for the day. We need not fret for tomorrow, for God is with us today, and will be still tomorrow and all the tomorrows.
THE GATE OF THE YEAR
‘God Knows’
And 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 out 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.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.
So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.
– Minnie Louise Haskins