In the Great Hand of God I Stand

“Nothing is alien in thy world immense-

No look of sky or earth or man or beast;

“In the great hand of God I stand, and thence”

Look out on life, his endless, holy feast.

To try to feel is but to court despair,

To dig for a sun within a garden-fence:

Who does thy will, O God, he lives upon thy air.”

~George MacDonald

As we travel through different seasons of life,

often the hymns,

“This is my Father’s world”, or “Great is Thy faithfulness” will comfort,

encourage and remind us to rest in God.

For He is our provision and protection especially when, at times,

we find ourselves feeling a bit alien, surprised or alone in our circumstances.

Our trust in God may appear to be tested or refined,

yet we find our hearts can return once again,

to walk in the fear of the LORD.

“To love God with “all our heart” is to know the spiritual passion

of measureless gratitude for loving-kindness,

and self-devotedness to goodness;

to love Him “with all our mind,” is to know the passion for Truth

that is the enthusiasm of Science,

the passion for Beauty that inspires the poet and the artist,

when all truth and beauty are regarded as the self-revealings of God;

to love Him “with all our soul,”

is to know the saint’s rapture of devotion and gaze

of penitential awe into the face of the

All-holy,

the saint’s abhorrence of sin, and agony of desire to save a sinner’s soul;

and to love Him “with all our strength,”

is the supreme spiritual passion that tests the rest;

the passion for reality,

for worship in spirit and in truth,

for being what we adore, for doing what we know to be God’s word;

the loyalty  that exacts the living sacrifice,

the whole burnt-offering that is our reasonable service,

and in our coldest hours

keeps steadfast to what seemed good when we were aglow.”

~J. H. Thom