Annie Johnson Flint (1866-1932) was a prolific popularly published Christian poet who spent her life suffering from the crippling effects of arthritis. I first read her poems in the early 1970's, soon after I met Jesus and began shopping for greeting cards in Christian bookstores. It was easy for me to read her poetry and consign the poems to the "sappy little old fashioned ditty" list. Her style of poetry and the sentiments expressed were not my own and I had a built in suspicion of any poet whose writings appeared on popular greeting cards. However at that stage in my young and healthy life I totally missed the point of what she was saying, and the depth of her heart felt love of God and of life in all its pain. One of her most popular poems of that time was What God Hath Promised. The first 2 lines are:
God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower strewn pathways all our lives through...........
And on it went for several stanzas that I could barely force myself to read at the time.
The point that I missed while I was busy mocking the writings of Annie and other Christians of her generation is that what she is saying is true! Sometimes life just sucks and that is all there is to it. Even Christians suffer and sometimes suffer endlessly on this earth. Out of that kind of suffering a wonderful love for Jesus can grow and flourish if we don't become bitter during those painful times. For that to happen we need to be fully aware that Jesus is close to us, the friend that stays closer than a brother, and it is up to us to remember his presence in the deeply sorrowful experiences of life. He never leaves us nor forsakes us, but our minds and hearts can become clouded and bitter and miss the constancy of his presence. Life and health and relationship with God can become complicated and frightening and the pat answers we learned in our early Christian lives are not always sufficient to draw on in the bad times. We need to know Jesus, and know him and know him and know him every day.
I was talking to friends last night who were bemoaning the present fate of a wonderful preacher and evangelist in their family, now sidelined permanently by dementia. The unfairness of such a fate being dealt to one who was so faithful to the Lord all his life struck us all with great force. But even as God's disciples we still inhabit our earthly bodies until we go to be with the Lord. Sometimes we see miraculous healings......and sometime we don't. Hebrews Chapter 11 is wonderfully helpful to me when I don't understand God allowing his own disciples to suffer after years of faithfulness to Him. The entire book of Job roots me into the inscrutableness (is that a word?) of God and confirms his ultimate love for me and for the entire universe no matter what else is going on in the here and now. Annie is right that life is not going to be wonderful or simple or understandable all the time. My respect for her love of God has grown as I have aged and realized her simple poems contain great spiritual truths about life.
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