“To comprehend a nectar / Requires sorest need”. Thus ends the first stanza of Emily Dickinson’s “first” poem, in quotes because it’s simply the one most often printed first in anthologies.* I recently came across such an anthology as I sorted through a box of books waiting for my attention after our move, and promptly removed it to my office for lunchtime perusal. Long have I been a Dickinson fan; perhaps we merely view the world through similar lenses, but I find a great deal of accuracy in her work.
How true indeed these particular words are. They reminded me specifically of the Psalms, wherein we find the Lord described as our refuge, shelter, strength, high tower, rock of refuge, and more. They are words that most Christians know and mentally assent to. But find me a person who clings to the Lord as a strong deliverer, and I will show you a person who knows what it is to suffer. It is only those who have walked through darkness that truly apprehend the Lord as a light, those who have been beset by trials and suffering that understand just what a refuge He is.
In a similar vein, the mercy and grace of God is cherished most by those who comprehend their own sinfulness. Pastor and author Dane Ortlund phrases it this way: “To the degree that you see yourself competent and sufficient, to that degree you will not turn to God. To the degree you see yourself as weak and inadequate, to that degree you will reach out to God.”^
Though we know not what lies ahead of us in this new year, it’s practically guaranteed that there will be some measure of suffering and pain. Such is the way of life as a human in a broken world. May the year ahead teach you to see yourself weak and inadequate, and turn to the Lord in your need.
*Her poems are most often sorted into “books” by theme: life, nature, love, time and eternity, and “the single hound” (death). There have been attempts to sort them into a semblance of chronology; the results are unreliable.
^In the Lord I Take Refuge, Psalm 70