God’s Power Cannot Be Measured

At sixty, in the middle of life, I pause a moment.
Bound up with ties I did not want to be bound by,
mixed in with ties I would rather not speak a word to,
before some force that sweeps all along, willing or not,
I stand dumbfounded.
With a head that holds less than a gourd dipper,
how can anyone grasp the providence of God?
With room smaller than the cup we drink from each day,
who could measure the whole of his grace?
Yet people declare with confidence
that God has no power, since it was not in the books they studied,
and that, since it is not in what they know, God too
could never do it.
How foolish they are.
If God could be grasped by their common sense,
he would not be God at all…
Do you really believe that human beings came out of the dust?
Do you really believe God created heaven and earth in six days?
Can you really believe that a man appeared and said he was the Savior,
that he would die on a cross for you,
and that if you believed in him you could come to heaven?
Those who believe what human common sense
could never begin to understand,
people who have lost their senses,
how can they not believe in heavenly gifts
given to fit each of God’s people?
What they have not received is not therefore absent,
nor does it exist only once they can believe it…
Because I do not know how much time God has given me,
I have no time to waste persuading them.
Let us leave those who do not know in their not knowing, and go on.
Those who struggle, bound by common sense no bigger than a pebble,
let us leave to their struggling, and go on.
Could they ever measure the power of God?
The stones strewn about, too small even to be stumbling blocks in life,
I leave, every one, to almighty God,
and just to fill the time that remains,
I take a step forward.