Bittersweet

Ah my dear angry Lord,

Since thou dost love, yet strike;

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure I will do the like.

                                   

I will complain, yet praise;

I will bewail, approve:

And all my sour-sweet days

I will lament, and love.

 

From the gentle devotion of our previous poem The Call we move on to something more astringent and challenging.

This miniature poem beautifully sums up the tension we find in George Herbert’s work which draws us deep down into the complexities and challenges of the spiritual life rather than leaving us on the pleasant surface of prayer and devotion.

First of all Herbert is not afraid of calling God angry. This is something we tend to shy away from in modern spirituality, but it is certainly part of the biblical witness. I, also, find it necessary – I need a God who is passionate and angry at injustice, hypocrisy and suffering. For me a God who is only sweetness and light is insufficient and unnecessary and different from the God I encounter in Scripture. Herbert seemed to feel the same.

Yet he does not easily accept an angry God – like those people who enjoy worshiping an angry God who will smite their enemies and justify their actions. No, for Herbert, this angry, difficult God must be struggled with. This is something he did throughout his life. He always struggled with ill health, dying at the young age of 39 but he also struggled with his way in life spending long years wondering what to do with himself after he decided the public life of politics and the court was not for him.

But for Herbert this awareness of an angry, demanding God is put alongside his awareness of the essential nature of God, which is, of course, love. This is one of the classic paradoxes in Christian theology but Herbert’s response to it is surprising and startling – and not without a touch of humour. For me it also provides an echo of Old Testament characters such as Abraham and Jeremiah who argued and contested with God in a way we often seem reluctant to do.

Herbert confronts the paradoxical nature of God with his own paradoxical self. If God can be dear and angry, loving and judging then perhaps this means that it’s okay to love God but also complain to God, to praise God but also be disappointed with God.

And this is what Herbert does throughout his verse. He is eloquent in his praise and love for God, but he is also equally eloquent in his complaints and despair. Herbert is not interested in a plaster saint, for him the only way of being a Christian is to be absolutely honest with God and hide and hides nothing. This did not mean that he didn’t live a decorous and respectable life – Herbert was no wild romantic poet! But in the secrecy of prayer Herbert never held back. It is important to remember that Herbert didn’t seek to publish his verse in his lifetime, it is the record of a private conversation with God which he conducted throughout his life. Poetry for him was prayer and we are eavesdropping on his devotions.

• Do you experience God as being angry?
• How easy do you find it to be honest with God?
• What in your own life is bittersweet