::hap::

" Hap"

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

That they love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

-Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan…

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Thomas Hardy 1898

i think that Hardy is onto something. This is yet another of the poems i must read to complete the well-rounding of my person-hood at the University. Delightfully, it's quite good!

so many times it would be easier to go through life blaming a vicious god, a god who did not care about us or want good things for us . . . it would make sense of why things in our lives turn out so dreadfully sometimes and that way it would not be our fault. As Hardy writes, we could "bear it, clench" ourselves, "and die." We could feel slighted by the "ire unmerited" that the gods had rained down on us; and though our lives were terrible, we could live "half-eased," feeling justified for our anger.

but that god does not exist. No indeed, there is not a "change" that brings us to our fates or has an evil hand in our undoing. if our lives are miserable, it is on account of sin (either that of our own, or its presence around us), and there is a loving God who does not play with us as toys. This knowledge makes it harder to go through life because we have no one to blame for our sorrows, but it makes it easier simultaneously because we have a Good God more powerful than we are, who does not destroy us for destruction's sake.

if He tears down, He will reconstruct.

if He breaks, He will mend.

if He kills, He will resurrect.

do the cross, believers. He will ALWAYS do the resurrection.

~ peace to you ~