God Has Not Promised...

God has not promised skies always blue

Flower strewn pathways all our lives through.

God has not promised sun without rain,

Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God has promised strength for the day;

Rest for the labor; light for the way;

Grace for the trials; help from above;

Unfailing sympathy; undying love.

I came across this piece of doggerel as one of those cards that are sometimes printed for funerals and distributed freely to those attending. Throughout years since then, it has stuck with me, perhaps because by some mysterious magic it constitutes more somehow, than the sum of its simple sentimentality. I would like to think that that is true. I no longer even remember whose funeral it was. But I do remember those two quatrains of two couplets each.

Language is a wonderful thing, more powerful than we sometimes realize, even in a deceptively simple few lines of what has to be named greeting card doggerel, rather than poetry.