THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
Jeremiah 31:1-3
“I have loved you with an everlasting love”
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
In 1917, a Roman Catholic magazine in England published a
poem by a drunken, destitute drug addict.
The poets name was
Francis Thompson, and his poem was titled “The Hound of Heaven.”
No one thought much of the poem at the time, but it has since been
translated into more than 70 languages. Even the cynical New York
Times said in an editorial, “It is one of the few English lyrics that
make the same powerful appeal to all nationalities and faiths.” A
young Robert Frost found a copy of it in a Massachusetts book store
and spent his cab fare to buy a copy. Eugene O’Neill memorized all
183 lines of it. And the phrase “with deliberate speed” came to
symbolize the Warren courts perception of the way their Brown V.
Board of Education was intended to be implemented. Even Justice
Frankfurter, in writing the majority opinion, made reference to it.
At its heart, the poem is about the struggle found in our human
relationship with God. It tells of how we seek God and yet run from
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Him at the same time. It also tells of God’s pursuit of us and His final
capturing of the human soul. All of this is the essence of scripture, the
entirety of the Bible captured into this one poem. Among the first
pages of scripture, God asks, “Where art thou?” Then on its final
page is found, “The Spirit and the bide say, Come. And let him that
hears say, Come. And let him that is thirsty come.” The Bible is the
story of a search.
More often than not, when we speak of searching it is from our
standpoint – our need to find God as though He were the one lost. Yet
there is truth in this, because the history of humanity is one of
searching for the Living God.
Plato said that in the beginning man and woman were one
person, then when they became separated love became an appetite and
a restless hunger urging them to be reunited. Just so, at the heart of
every human being is an unnamed hunger to be at one again with his
or her Creator – with God.
The search for beauty is the search for God, as is the search for
truth. Some find God through suffering, or torment – inner emptiness,
or in times of deep need. Many have found Him through music, while
others have come to Him through nature. St. Ignatius said that he
found God while sitting by a stream. Billy Sunday proclaimed, “I
stumbled drunk into the Great Arms.” George Henry Luce wrote,
“The history of philosophy is the history of man’s long quest for
God.”
The greater reality though, is the Divine’s unrelenting quest for
man. It is Adam hiding from Him among the trees, Jacob wrestling
Him to the point of exhaustion, and Jonah running the other way. It is
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God’s relentless love for David in spite of the adultery, murder, and
hypocrisy which David did in return. Yet when David finally did
pray, “Cast me not from your presence, and take not your holy spirit
from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation…” David was
given another chance – not only did God forgive him, but He also
restored Him to the point where David preaches from every pulpit,
sings from every song book, and his psalms are the pillow of comfort
beneath the head of the dying.
Peter ran from God. The honors, the distinctions, the special
instructions that Christ gave to him were repaid with a huge denial
that the two of them had ever met – let alone being a follower. But
God kept reaching and searching and called him back to feed His
flock and to become a great leader of His church. God made of him a
true rock – no longer in name only, but in deed and in character as
well.
John Mark lost all heart to continue with Paul and Barnabas on
their journey when the way became rough. So much so that Paul lost
all confidence in John Mark and when leaving on their next journey
did not want him to come along because he was too unreliable – just
could not believe that he would finish what he started.
But he
repented of his cowardice and weakness, was given another chance,
and proved himself a useful and faithful tool for Christ. In one of the
last messages we have from Paul, written from his prison in Rome, he
asks Timothy to bring Mark with him, because Mark was a very
useful and necessary piece of his ministry.
St. Augustine ran hard to get away from God. At age 16 he left
home and plunged into the abyss of a cesspool in which he continued
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to wallow to the age of 31. God did not let him go and kept tugging at
him through his mother Monica. Finally God brought Augustine to
know Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. The rest is history – the long
struggle concluded and Augustine knelt at the foot of the Cross as one
who was to do great things for Christ and His Kingdom.
These are still accurate pictures of our restless generation. “I
fled Him down the labyrinthine ways…down the nights and down the
days…with desperate haste, deliberate speed.” The real truth about
us, the real secret of our feelings, the true tempo of our culture, the
tragedy of our life, is that we are not really attempting to find, but
rather to flee – to get away, to hide from the eyes of the Holy One.
But we can never escape the inescapable.
Always on the same path as we are on there is the sound of
strong feet following after us. You can name His footsteps in your
own life – just as I can name them in mine. One of them is memory –
deep down memory – half hidden and half forgotten, yet remembering
a time when we were “made a little less than God.” Can that really
ever be forgotten – totally? Macneile Dixon said that this is what the
fine arts are about at their heart. Music, poetry, painting are all
humanities attempts to find and recapture this old ideal, like some
lost chord, an attempt to put together that perfect combination of keys
on the piano.
Much is being said today about the rise of secular humanism
and the abandonment of old, out-dated beliefs. But those beliefs have
not abandoned us. They continue to lie buried in our minds and hearts
like a dream which awakens at unexpected moments. I have always
enjoyed the old Russian fable about a school girl who was raised as an
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atheist. One of the questions on a test she was taking read: “What is
the inscription on the Sarmian Wall?” She wrote: “Religion is the
opiate of the people.” However, being unsure of her answer, she went
to the wall following school to look and see if she was right. There
she found the inscription: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
Turning to go home she sighed, “Thank God, I got it right.” Even
under the frozen mind of human denial there stirs the memory – half
hidden, half remembered. Even when suppressed by the world –
governments, cultures, mores of the times – Strong Feet will continue
to follow after us.
The absence of God and the emptiness of life are complaints
which we hear all around today. “Jesus makes life full” we say. “I
came that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full”
we quote. “We need to bring God back into our lives” we preach.
We are on a search, a quest to fill that void which we can never truly
identify or name.
But what if the truth of it is the other way around? What if
everything which we interpret as being a sign of Divine absence is
actually a sign of God’s presence? What is a sense of guilt but proof
that we are His children? What if misery is the surest sign of hope?
What if sadness is really an invitation home? Or if discouragement
and disillusion say that God is still in our heart? “Thou hast made us
for Thyself, O God, and restless are our hearts until they rest in Thee”
St. Augustine prayed.
Have you ever considered that God just might pursue us the
strongest through heresy – those brilliant arguments which seek to
convince that God does not exist just might be the surest proof we
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have of His very existence. Question: Why is so much contemporary
media filled with God talk? Why are so many people preoccupied
with the tragic side of life, the victimization of men and women and
children, the revolt against religion and the cutting out of God from
culture? So much is being written and said about religion being
finished. If that is true, then why not drop the subject? If God is dead
then why keep talking about Him? Why all the talk about God by
people who say they do not believe in Him?
One of the most brilliant atheists of the 20 th century was Jean
Paul Sartre. Why was he so preoccupied with God? He said that
humanity must forget God, give up the search for God, and then –
then page after page of his writings are filled with his search for
meaning, shaking his fist at the sky and justifying his case against the
Almighty. “We must forget God” he said, and yet God haunted him
and hunted him all of his days. Sartre believed that he was finished
with God, but God was not finished with him.
Martin Luther
understood this ambivalence well, “Nobody in this life is nearer to
God than those who deny Him. He has no children more dear to Him
than those like Job and Jacob who wrestle with him and cannot let
Him go.”
Herein lies the truth of it: we try to get away, to run and to hide,
but we cannot. Take the wings of the morning and fly to the ends of
the earth – and He is there. Make your bed in hell – the hell of
stupidity, the hell of sorrow, the hell of pain – and He is there.
Something greater than ourselves is coming after us, and because the
world is round we have nowhere to hide. Because His love is great,
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he will not let us get away. His goodness and mercy have followed us
all the days of our lives.
The old time preachers and theologians had a phrase for this –
prevenient grace. It means that God has been on this road of life long
before we were and He is calling us to journey forward, holding us,
guiding us, catching us, making the crooked a little straighter and the
obstacles a little smoother; and that we look for Him on this road of
ours and seek Him to help us only because He reached out to us first.
He is the seeker and we are the sought – how else do you explain the
Cross?
He is calling your name. Do you believe that He is distant or
absent, hard to find and hiding? Or are you hiding from Him?
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me ?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
Halts by me that footfall :
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly ?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest !
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."
Amen.
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