Sunrise at sea

I had a chiropractor visit yesterday. He asked, “Do you have some goals for this coming year?”

“I’d like to complete a book of devotions I’ve been working on,” I said.

“When do you think you’ll complete it?”

“Hmmmm, I haven’t planned that far. I think maybe by the end of the year.”

And so it goes. Do you make plans for the new year? Goals, resolutions? Just as my answer was a bit hazy with my doctor, do you have blurred plans?

Poetry is not my favorite type of reading, but I discovered a Victorian poet whom I’ve begun to enjoy, Diana Mulock Craik, 1826-1887. The question of “What’s your plan?” fits with the following piece she wrote. The story behind the Doxology is as follows: “Some cotton has lately been imported into Farringdon, where the mills have been closed for a considerable time. The people, who were previously in the deepest distress, went out to meet the cotton: the women wept over the bales and kissed them, and finally sang the Doxology over them.” (Spectator of May 14, 1863).

A Lancashire Doxology

“PRAISE God from whom all blessings flow.”
Praise Him who sendeth joy and woe.
The Lord who takes, — the Lord who gives, —
O praise Him, all that dies, and lives.
He opens and He shuts his hand,
But why, we cannot understand:
Pours and dries up his mercies’ flood,
And yet is still All-perfect Good.
We fathom not the mighty plan,
The mystery of God and man;
We women, when afflictions come,
We only suffer and are dumb.
And when, the tempest passing by,
He gleams out, sun-like, through our sky,
We look up, and through black clouds riven,
We recognize the smile of Heaven.
Ours is not wisdom of the wise,
We have no deep philosophies:
Childlike we take both kiss and rod,
For he who loveth knoweth God.