If everything be lost, thanks be to God
If I must see it go, watch it go,
Watch it fade away, die
Thanks be to God that He is all I have
And if I have Him not, I have nothing at all
Nothing at all, only a farewell to the wind
Farewell to the grey sky
Goodbye, God be with you evening October sky.
If all is lost, thanks be to God,
For He is He, and I, I am only I.
from "A Severe Mercy"
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This is one of my all time favorite poems. I probably read the book 30 years ago and never forgot it. It's the first line and the last 2 lines that really get me. "If everything be lost, thanks be to God" and "If all is lost, thanks be to God, for He is He, and I, I am only I."
In the book, the author was losing his wife to an illness, but it's the overall sentiment that resonates with me. Everything we have is God's -including our lives- and what He chooses to do is completely up to Him. I have yielded my life to Him and it is His. No questions asked.
The enormity of that certainty (and the peace therein) causes me to consider the God we love so dearly. The One we love, yet cannot see. The One we yield to, unreservedly. Yesterday I was thinking about the Holy Spirit's omnipresence, and the only way my brain could wrap itself around it was to consider air.
Air is one of the only, if not the only "thing" that is everywhere- from earth to the atmosphere- that we cannot see. Yet we need to have it to breathe. It just is.
Everything else I was thinking of is finite. The clouds, the sky... but air is different. We can't see it as we can see everything else with our physical eyes.
Just something to ponder. I am sensing the Lord wants to take it further, so I will put an asterisk on this one for another time. He is whispering words of 'Ruach' and 'inspiration' for more connections and understanding.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
