“God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.” This is a well-known line from Pippa, an orphan girl in a Robert Browning poetic drama.  It expressed the relief that she felt at her one day off a year from her duties in a silk factory.  The tonic of getting out from under her drudgery and having a chance to “smell the daisies” left her with this sense of wellbeing, and thus a feeling that all was well.

    The pragmatic part of us says, “Yes, God is in His heaven, but all is not right with the world.”  Just the news of this week has been distressing, as we have witnessed the divisive and discordant dialogue among leaders of our beloved country.  And that is only a start, if we were to let ourselves stay chained to the negative.

    However, in the Sabbath God has given us a day off—not once a year, but once a week—when our sense of wellbeing can be restored.  Because all is not right with the world, and because the enemy of God has not yet been banished, it is entirely right that a child of God should often experience the reassurance that “the soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose” is in good hands.

    After the terrible tragedy in which Horatio Spafford lost his four daughters, he could pen “It Is Well With My Soul,” because he had a sense that the things that really matter were eternally secure to him.  No doubt all committed believers experience things in their lives that they don’t like and wouldn’t choose.  However, in accepting what God allows, there is peace.

    I have pondered the “Do not fret because of evil doers” from the Psalms, and the “Let not your heart be troubled” from the lips of Jesus, and the “Come unto Me all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  There are many other scriptures and hymns that bring perspective to life, such that we don’t have to be harried, hopeless, and driven people, feeling as if we are hanging on by the skin of our teeth.

    So may we all experience a renewed sense of wellbeing this evening as we step out of the factory of daily demands to “smell the daisies,” and revel in the fact that “God is Good, All the Time.”