Poem for our day
It Is Often Asked what grievance does God have that He should storm against us with His wrath? And why should we obey His rules as though we didn’t know how to live and would conduct ourselves as fools? To top the list, we don’t even know this thing is real, this killer of joy, this would-be lord of all prohibitive! To which it may be said, He is a king of realms so pure and pristine bright He’d not be fit to rule if not destroy what wasted all His earth with blight of misery, death, and raging pain. The ravager is sin, which fiercely contravenes those laws of love and life which shall prevail and are the joy of His domain. To oppose His well-thought plan to clean the world of ills and comfort all who appeal for mercy and new life, will fail, for who can thwart His will to heal? No cruel tyrant this sovereign Lord, in pity took upon Himself the bane undoing us, Himself bore the judging Word, dying in our place, this tender Nazarene. King of the new world, He had the right to suffer in His people’s stead freeing them from the weight of guilt and death; this Lord of Heaven and earth cares for them as you have seen, to His last breath, not just the good and strong, but bad and feeble receive His grace; and as He rose from the dead we also shall, His living-jewel diadem. It is not right to rail against Him who did and does us so much good, but rail multitudes for a while will do being so deeply enthralled with sin — the defiant “I’ll do my own thing” — pursuing what seems right in their own eyes while in His face disputing what is true, this majestic One who in eternity is king.