Take Comfort"Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32) I have moments when I can well understand that an atheist may find comfort in having no God. To have the universe be an enormous machine, everything geared together in amazing precision and I only another cog in the machine — this lets me off. I have no responsibility. Every turn in my life is determined for me. I only spin and move along with the turning wheel. This "comfort" has never been described as beautifully as it was penned by the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, in his Rubaiyat:"The moving finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on; nor all thy pity nor witShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.And that inverted bowl we call the sky,Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,Lift not thy hands to it for help—for itRolls impotently on as thou and I.Shakespeare’s Macbeth expresses it with less beauty, and with the note of despair which is the outcome of a life or a world in which God and meaning have been lost:Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way of dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing. All’s not right with the world, but God is in his heavens, and Jesus Christ has come into our lives to save, to lead and to rule. He claims and names us as his own, sheep of his pasture and of his little flock and heirs of the Father’s eternal kingdom. What greater comfort than this?
