+ In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Last Thursday Ingrid and I went to see The King’s Speech. It’s the story of the Duke of York, who suffered from a terrible stutter. As the second son of King George V, he consoled himself that he would seldom need to speak publicly. But after King George V died, and his older brother Edward abdicated the throne, King George VI was faced with the daunting task of speaking regularly by radio to the British Empire, which then included 25% of the world’s population.
After a series of frustrating attempts, the King finally found a speech therapist to help him. It’s a terrific movie, and it reminded me of one of the King’s speeches which he delivered on Christmas Day 1939, as Britain faced its second world war in a generation. He concluded this Christmas Day speech with part of a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins. She studied and then taught at the London School of Economics, but she was also a poet, and in 1908 wrote a poem titled “God Knows.” George the VI’s wife, Queen Elizabeth, read the poem and shared it with her husband. George VI concluded his Christmas Day address in 1939 with the poem’s opening lines:
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.”
Here is the rest of the poem:
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.
So let us put our hands into the Hand of God this year, for it shall be better than light and safer than a known way. Amen.
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