I Said to the Man who Stood at the Gate of the Year

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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!'

                                               * * *

King George VI ended his famous 1939 Christmas message with these words. (Listen here.)

The words were written by an unknown poet called Minnie Haskell. She wasn’t credited.  "I read the quotation in a summary of the speech," she told The Daily Telegraph the following day. "I thought the words sounded familiar and suddenly it dawned on me that they were out of my little book."

She had published 3 books, none of which were well-known. Sadly, even the rest of this poem was not particularly good.

* * *

A lifetime of writing, and you are remembered for 4 lines.

Success or failure?

Success or failure?

* * *

Well, that is a good deal more than most people are remembered for 137 years after their birth.

But most writers, myself included, might consider that writing life to be a failure.

* * *

But, in fact, writers can’t choose. Writers can control their art and craft. They can network and hustle and get their work out there. But they cannot control whether their work touches people or not. They cannot control whether their work endures.

How much better then to leave such matters, to leave our entire writing lives, in the hands of God?

* * *

A writing life, three books, and all that survives are four lines, which no one knew you wrote:

Success or failure?

Failure, if you are the management, if you own your life.

* * *

But if you do not own your life?

If you have given yourself and your life and your talent into the hands of Christ, for him to shape as it pleases him.

That may sound grand, but, in fact, it is voluntarily acknowledging a fact.

Our lives and our careers and our work are in the hands of Christ, whether we preciously safeguard them, and polish them, and manoeuvre them, or fret about them.

We are in God’s hands, and everything comes from him, all our doing, gifting and having, and everything can be taken away by him. In an instant. In the twinkling of an eye.

* * *

So to come back to the question, if all that endured of a life is four lines, which no one knew you wrote: success or failure?

But that is not the question.

If you belong to Christ--success or failure, fame or obscurity, a million readers or none at all, your name unknown or a household word—that is his business.

You business is to '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!'

Your business is to dance with your Saviour, to do the best you can each day, and then deposit the day into his hands, with its successes and failures, the times you blew it, and the times you didn’t.

The fruitful days, and the wasted days. The fruitful years, and the “wasted” years.

The times you were mindful of Christ and loved and remembered him, and the times you failed to do so.

And then tomorrow is another day, and you will again dance with him, happily, giving thanks in everything.

* * *

So Jesus, I give you my writing, and my writing career, such as it is, or may be. I leave it our hands and I am not going to worry about it any more, but only pray. (Phil 4:6-8)

I put the clay of my talent, such as it is, into your hands, and leave you to shape it as it pleases you.

Lord Jesus,

I give you my life, my plans,

·      my health of body and mind and spirit,

·      my finances,

·      my relationships.

·       I am not going to worry about these things any more, but only pray.

·      And the covenant made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven, Amen.