“God’s in His Heaven – All’s Right With the World!”

“God’s in His heaven — All’s right with the world!”  Have you ever heard that line from Robert Browning?  Do you agree?

This line of poetry was taken from Browning’s poem, “Pippa’s Song”:

“Pippa’s Song”

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 (1812-1889)

This poem, especially its last two lines, has always struck a chord with me.  Whenever I see rays of sunlight streaming through the clouds, I am reminded that “God’s in His heaven — All’s right with the world!”  But I know some people wouldn’t agree with those lines.  There are many things wrong with the world, after all.  Shootings and terrorism are some of the first things that come to mind.

But I still hold that the lines of Browning’s poem are true – at least they can be true. No matter what this world brings upon itself as the result of sin, God is still God, and He is still good. He is still on His throne, and His world is good! This world down here is pretty muddied up (always has been, even before guns were invented – sinful people still killed), but its day of purging is coming. Even though we live in a sin-cursed world, we Christians have “the earnest of our inheritance” because we have the Spirit of God living in us. We have a down-payment of our heavenly reward here on earth. This means that even though the world is in chaos around us, we can still be at peace because of God’s Spirit living within us. This means that even though not much is right in the world, we can be right with God, and therefore everything in our world can be right as well. Do we still feel sadness and pity for the evil around us? Absolutely, but underneath that is a sure foundation of peace and rest in God. We know that God is in His heaven – and therefore, everything in our world can be right if we relax and follow God’s direction.