The Ultimate Way Out
Story★★★A man said to me, “There is always one way out. I can take a knife and cut my throat.” I said, “Before the knife is out of your hand you will be looking into the face of God.”
One who felt the need of getting away on a cruise, when he reached the Mediterranean realized that he had taken all his worries with him. “If I take the wings of the morning . . . even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.” This is what Francis Thompson tried to say to us in that poem of his when he made it appear as though the soul were running away from a hound, the Hound of Heaven.
I fled Him down the nights and down the days I fled Him down the arches of the years I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind: and in the midst of tears, I hid from Him, and under running laughter Up vistaed slopes I sped And shot, precipitated Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears From those strong feet that followed, followed after. Leslie D. Weatherhead From Christian World Pulpit, Vol.
The point
No matter how far a soul runs from God, His pursuing love -- pictured in Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven -- is always right behind, ready to lead and hold us.