My fellow Tramp Glenn at Crookedshore sent me this poem. It sort of sent me off on some lateral thinking about faith, providence & pre-destination (yes that!).
Have a read and feel free to share your perspective. Oh! Do visit the gang at crookedshore, well worth a visit.
The God Who Loves You
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction.
And every point A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feelKnowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months.
Sit down tonight And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
3 comments:
That really is a poem to mess with your head !!
I once heard John O'Donohue ask "where do our unknown lives dwell". When we make decisions over alternatives, where do the consequences of the rejected decisions live out. John O'Donohue (very helpful) suggested they were in our imagination. Needless to say I am still searching my imagination for what would have happened if I had studied at Hull University and not Magee...
As time goes by I become less and less confident about knowing anything about this bit of the universe we find ourselves in works. I am learning to love the mystery that the divine has created and accept it.
Thanks for the honest perspective Jonny. Was talking to Mr Davy Small yesterday and he was also relating the imagination to this poem.
I agree about having less confidence about knowing but I am comforted by the sense that a searching heart is attractive to Yahweh. So; we continue the journey back to God.
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