Whenever someone asks how I am doing these days, I usually find myself saying, “All right.” I understand that “How are you?” is generally a greeting, not a question, but most of the time people are really asking, and I do not want them to be sorry they did. “All right,” seems to answer the question in all respects without beginning a litany of troubles. Things are not good and may never be again, but I am not now in the middle of another crisis.
Look at that phrase carefully, though. “All right.” Isn’t it odd that it has come to mean that things are not “all” right? Not actually bad, but certainly not “great.”
Do you remember the poem “Pippa’s Song” from Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes? Actually, all I remember is the last line: “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.” The context of that poem is interesting. Pippa is an orphan in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Asolo, Italy, where even the pillars of the community live lives of moral decadence. Yet her viewpoint is that, despite all the evil in the world, we can still know that God is in his Heaven, and thus everything is “all right,” in the true meaning of those two words, not their presently understood mediocrity.
Especially if we interpolate a word in there, “God’s back in his Heaven and all’s right with the world,” we Christians can know the same thing.
God, who became the Son, left Heaven for us, going so far as to give up his equality with God the Father, Phil 2:6.7, suffering the same trials and temptations we do in life, yet refusing to give in to sin, Heb 4:15. He died a torturous death, Acts 2:23. Then, just as Satan thought he had won the ultimate victory, it was snatched out of his hands when Jesus rose from the dead, 1 Cor 15:1-8. Forty days later he ascended back into Heaven, Acts 1:3,9. And all of that happened so we could be forgiven, so we could live an abundant life here (a spiritual abundance), and so we could have Eternal Life in the hereafter.
So remember today and every day, regardless how your life is going, regardless how you may feel, regardless the horrible tragedies Satan may have unleashed around us, “God’s [back] in his Heaven, and all’s right with the world.”
Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight of sin that so easily besets us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, Heb 12:1,2.
Dene Ward
Look at that phrase carefully, though. “All right.” Isn’t it odd that it has come to mean that things are not “all” right? Not actually bad, but certainly not “great.”
Do you remember the poem “Pippa’s Song” from Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes? Actually, all I remember is the last line: “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.” The context of that poem is interesting. Pippa is an orphan in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Asolo, Italy, where even the pillars of the community live lives of moral decadence. Yet her viewpoint is that, despite all the evil in the world, we can still know that God is in his Heaven, and thus everything is “all right,” in the true meaning of those two words, not their presently understood mediocrity.
Especially if we interpolate a word in there, “God’s back in his Heaven and all’s right with the world,” we Christians can know the same thing.
God, who became the Son, left Heaven for us, going so far as to give up his equality with God the Father, Phil 2:6.7, suffering the same trials and temptations we do in life, yet refusing to give in to sin, Heb 4:15. He died a torturous death, Acts 2:23. Then, just as Satan thought he had won the ultimate victory, it was snatched out of his hands when Jesus rose from the dead, 1 Cor 15:1-8. Forty days later he ascended back into Heaven, Acts 1:3,9. And all of that happened so we could be forgiven, so we could live an abundant life here (a spiritual abundance), and so we could have Eternal Life in the hereafter.
So remember today and every day, regardless how your life is going, regardless how you may feel, regardless the horrible tragedies Satan may have unleashed around us, “God’s [back] in his Heaven, and all’s right with the world.”
Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight of sin that so easily besets us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, Heb 12:1,2.
Dene Ward
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