Adventures in Parenting

Are you looking forward to 2009 with anticipation or with anxiety?

I tend to be a nervous kind of person. Two days ago we took our kids skiing at the local mountains; the anticipation kept me up half the night.

When I came across this poem At the Gate of the Year by Minnie Louise Harkins published in 1908, I was comforted by its words to me 100 years later. The first two stanzas were made widely popular when King George VI quoted it in his Christmas broadcast to the British Empire in 1939, in the early days of the Second World War.

Even in the face of tremendous challenges, there is no safer way than in the hand of God.

Happy New Year to you all.

At the Gate of the Year

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!’

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.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.