Standing on the brink of a new year desperately trying to get this one as far behind us as possible, the weighing of relative merits and demerits of the past is incumbent on thinking folks. It is good to think about the Lord while doing so and nice to have poetic guidance in doing so. Here Martin Franzmann-
He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.” (Col. 1: 17) “It was the worst of times; it was the best of times.” It always is. Any fairly clever theologian or fairly clever historian can always make out a pretty good case for both. It is rather difficult today, but for us in America at least most of our troubles are in the future. If we want to agonize ourselves by taking troubles out of God’s lap and putting them into our own, God is good-natured about that sort of thing with a sort of judgmental good nature. But as of now you could call it good times or bad times, whichever way you please. But in the last analysis if you call them good times or bad times monomaniacally, you are always bound to end up making a fool of yourself, and an impious fool at that. The great art that we must learn (and it is the obvious one which we always forget), the indispensable art, the queen of all arts, is to learn to sing, in bad times and in good times and in times that are both good and bad: Tu solus O Christe. “Thou only, O Christ, art most high in the glory of God the Father.” For it pleased the Father that in Him all fullness should dwell, that He should make peace by the blood of His cross, and that God should by Him reconcile all things to Himself.
