Thought for the Day: The "Hound of Heaven" is Your Friend

"The two greatest dramas of life are the soul in pursuit of God and God in pursuit of the soul."   Fulton Sheen 

One of my favorite poems is Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven.  I memorized the first stanza a number of years ago and often recite it to myself.

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; And in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter....

I love the cadence which sounds the beat of the pursuing hound who follows "with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace." The poem fills me with wonder. The God of the universe pursues ME. In my youth when I was running away from God, he set the hound loose and he has been my friend ever since I stopped running and surrendered to the truth and listened in earnest to the voice of God. He loved me in my tragic state of rebellion and loved me into faithfulness; not a perfect faithfulness, unfortunately, but a striving one.

Alack! Thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art.
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee, I did'st but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.
All which thy childs mistake fancies as lost,
I have stored for thee at Home.
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

I am still unworthy of His love, but he loves me anyway! And then comes that oh-so-personal message to Me, a creature, who is literally less to Him than a grasshopper is to me:

Halts by me that Footfall.
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, Fondest, Blindest, Weakest,
I am He whom thou seekest.
Thou dravest Love from thee who dravest Me.

If only all men would know that when they drive God away, they drive away Love Incarnate. He is all in all, but he loves each of us, as St. Augustine says, as if there were just one of us. Any suffering he allows in our lives is only the "Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly." Oh, if only we could see it!

The hound of heaven is, indeed, man's best friend.