Week 1: May 30 through June 5

As best I can tell, the poems for May 30 through June 5 are all part of a unit, and I will address them together today.  It will be interesting, as we read through the poems this summer, to note how large these units are.  I had expected that each day's poem would be independent of its neighbors, but the May 31 poem, for example ("'Tis heart on heart thou rulest...") is much more comprehensible when read together with the May 30 poem ("O Christ, who didst appear in Judah land...").

The poems in this unit tell of God's plan for the world, and ask that we may take part in that plan.  MacDonald had an expansive vision of God's love and beneficence.  For MacDonald, God is at all times "working the holy, satisfying hour, / When all shall love, and all be loved again" (May 31).  In fact, for MacDonald, all that God does to order the world is in service to that end.  The matter is most plainly stated in the June 3 poem, addressed to Christ:

This, this alone thy father careth for--
That men should live hearted throughout with thee--
Because the simple, only life thou art,
Of the very truth of living, the pure heart.
For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea,
Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor
Shall cease till men have chosen the better part.

I have always been troubled by such statements; there are so many terrible things in the world that I have a hard time imagining that our loving God ordains them all for loving ends.  Of course, I am not the first person to ask such questions, in ancient times or in relatively recent history, nor the only one today to be troubled by them.  And I'm deeply suspicious of the apparent implication that humankind can somehow "choose the better part" and bring about the Kingdom of God—or that human suffering is likely to bring about such a choice.

I had not expected to be thrown so rapidly into theodicy when I chose this book for my summer devotion series!  It is, I confess, easy for me to become preoccupied with such questions.

But rather than digging myself further into a "Problem of Evil" hole, let me stay closer to MacDonald's chosen theme for this week's poems.  MacDonald is writing to, and of, Christ—God's ultimate self-expression, our best way of knowing God.  The ultimate mark of God's love for us is Christ's coming among us, dying, and rising again.  It is the love we know in Christ that makes it possible for us to love our neighbors.  And since Christ is living, Christ now and at all times continues as he did when he lived on earth, "feeding the faint divine in humble men [and women!]" (May 31).  Christ gives us life here and now—not in some distant future—in order that we may live for others.

I close with a quotation from the June 1 poem:

Here is my heart--from thine, Lord, fill it up,
That I may offer it as the holy cup
Of thy communion to my every man.

That is a good prayer for all times; I will make it mine for this week, and I invite you to do the same.  Christ fills your heart—how will you offer to others that which you have received?

Next week: verses for June 6-13.  Faith in the unseen.  Our participation in God's existence.  Unbelief and unbelievers.