Day 1:
Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him.
You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship You (Nehemiah 9:6).
Early one morning as a New Year dawns, a young girl celebrates her only day off for the entire year by taking a long walk through her small town. As she walks, she sings a song, celebrating life and goodness. Her planned route takes her past the houses of those she considers the "happiest four" in her town. This is the introduction to Robert Browning's dramatic poem, Pippa Passes.
In her innocence (some would say naiveté), Pippa could never imagine what sordid details and evil machinations lurked behind the curtains of the houses she passes. She never dreams of the shocking reality of the lives of her 'happiest four.' She has no concept that the pure notes of her song land in the middle of an adulterous affair complete with a tangled conspiracy to commit murder; a marriage contrived of a cruel prank; an assassination plot; and a child prostitution scheme that poses a danger to Pippa herself.
So Pippa sings on:
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl'd;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven—
All’s right with the world!
~Robert Browning ~1841
Some of Browning's critics have scorned the pure optimism in Pippa's song, viewed against the stark reality of her world. Besides all the evil plots and intrigues in her town of Asolo, they point out the terrible evils of Pippa's own life. Poor and alone, she toils, exploited and unprotected in the daily grind of a silk factory for 364 days of the year (365 in a leap year!)
Browning's irony was deliberate. In one of his letters, he wrote that the themes of his verse "typify and figure... Mankind, the whole poor-devildom one sees cuffed and huffed from morn to midnight."
As I look at the poem and the criticisms raised against it, I think of some of the same criticisms leveled at the Bible in its proclamation of a good God who is sovereign over a world full of evil, intrigue, danger, and treachery. But it is precisely the issue of evil, and intrigue, and danger, and treachery that the Bible uncovers in the story of God’s perfect creation, and humanity’s disobedience with its consequences. And yet, like Pippa’s song, the notes of hope and joy resound in the face of wickedness, and deceit, and devastation, and death.
In Browning’s poem, the notes of Pippa’s song as she passes make their way into the intrigue, the depravity, and the perversion, and the result is dramatic change in some of the situations. But Pippa is unconscious of the impact of her song on her townspeople.
The Bible on the other hand, sounds its deliberate notes of love and redemption into the lives of a hurting and wounded world reeling from chaos and confusion, and death and destruction. It broadcasts a melody of hope into the grimy particulars of lost humanity "cuffed and huffed from morn to midnight." And nowhere more strongly and sweetly than in the story of the crucifixion, and the resurrection, planned in perfect and purposeful detail from start to finish:
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent out His Son, born to a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as children (Galatians 4:4 - World English Bible).
As we celebrate Easter, we celebrate a sovereign, loving, powerful God who planned the redemption of the world through the death of His Son on a cross: For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
We celebrate His victory over sin and death, and we celebrate His plan to renew and restore all things (Romans 8:18-25; Revelation 21:1-5). We celebrate His supremacy and we celebrate the unfolding of His perfect will.
We celebrate that in spite of human disobedience, and the rebellion that unleashed evil in God’s perfect world, evil has not triumphed. We celebrate the kindness of a Savior who prayed for forgiveness for scoffers as He hung on a Roman cross. And we celebrate the patience, and the kindness of a God who continues to hold open the door of grace to scoffers, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
Christ is risen—He is risen indeed! The resurrection, more than anything in the history of troubled humanity, sounds the notes of pure joy through all creation:
God’s in His heaven, All’s right with the world.
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