The Sauntering Pilgrim

In the dark, uncertain days of late 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, England’s King George VI wanted to encourage his nation, so in his Christmas message he read a poem, “God Knows” (also known as “The Gate of the Year”), by Minnie Louise Haskins, an almost unknown teacher at the London School of Economics. The poem began:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year,
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied, “Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!”

The words caught the imagination of the British in their first Christmas of the war and were widely repeated. They were read again in 2002 at the funeral of King George’s wife, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and they’re engraved at the entrance of the chapel where both are now interred.

It was roughly twenty years after King George’s Christmas broadcast that I learned of the poem. A small, hand-written copy of it was found in my grandfather’s wallet after his death. I never heard him speak of it – I don’t know that anyone did – but he found enough meaning in those words to keep them always with him. They must have encouraged him at the beginning of many new years and seasons and ventures in life when the future could not be imagined, much less predicted.

Those words have come to me whenever I’ve had my own little talk with the One who stands at the gate of any new year or season of life. Now I face each new year and new beginning with less desire to see into the unknown and with more confidence in the God who leads me where I cannot see. We need such confidence today. As much as ever before, we need to put our hand into the hand of the divine presence “that shall be to [us] better than light and safer than a known way.”

Twenty-five-hundred years ago, Israel faced their own darkness. The nation languished in captivity, overwhelmed by shifting geopolitical forces beyond their control, deprived of their familiar life in the collapse of their cultural and political center, and betrayed by their own shortsightedness, misplaced priorities, and poor choices. And immersed in their epic tragedy, they began to imagine a future that could not be predicted from their present circumstances. “For darkness shall cover the earth,” Isaiah intoned, “and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and [God’s] glory will appear over you. Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice” (Isa. 60:2, 5).

Today we stand at many thresholds at once, many new beginnings. If trying to predict or determine the future has taught us anything, it’s that we cannot predict or determine the future.

As we stand at the gate of a new year, able to see neither the road ahead nor where it leads, let’s remember that our present circumstances, however dire and uncertain they may seem in some ways, do not predict the future that’s in God’s hands. As Haskins wrote in her poem, “In all the dizzy strife of things / Both high and low, / God hideth his intention.”

God doesn’t ask us to be in control of the future. God asks only for our hand, for our trust in God’s promise and our confidence in God’s providence, for our radical dependence on the Source of life that’s beyond our control. God asks only that we yield ourselves with confidence to God’s will and commit ourselves to doing what Minnie Louise Haskins described in the final words of her poem:

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night.
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.