God Knows

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While channel surfing, I caught the tail end of a Jimmy Stewart film entitled, The Mortal Storm, and heard this beautiful line: 

“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I went into the web to look for the complete text and found out it was from a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins, a noted British academic on sociology and economics.

Interestingly, the poem became popular when then-Princess Elizabeth gave a  copy of it to her father, King George VI and he quoted it in his 1939 Christmas broadcast to the British Empire.

Check out more trivia about the poem here.

This is the complete poem taken from Wikipedia:

The Gate of the Year

also known as"God Knows"

by

Minnie Louise Haskins

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:

What need our little life

Our human life to know,

If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife

Of things both high and low,

God hideth His intention.

God knows. His will

Is best. The stretch of years

Which wind ahead, so dim

To our imperfect vision,

Are clear to God. Our fears

Are premature; In Him,

All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until

God moves to lift the veil

From our impatient eyes,

When, as the sweeter features

Of Life’s stern face we hail,

Fair beyond all surmise

God’s thought around His creatures

Our mind shall fill.