Through my professional life I have been guided, tongue in cheek, by three personal mottos of great sagacity. The first is by author Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22: “Every change is for the worse.”
Recognising that this is a little pessimistic, I balance it with former US vice president Dan Quayle’s strange observation that “the future will be better tomorrow”. Logically, I suppose, it can’t be better yesterday, but how does he know? I like his confidence.
“The future will be better tomorrow,” according to former US Vice President Dan Quayle.Credit: AP
Third and most important – a maxim I apparently share with most of the population, along with Lucy from Peanuts – is “if you can’t be right, be wrong as loudly as possible”.
Handy though those axioms are, they don’t really work in the realm of faith.
Like most believers I have my favourite Bible verses, but recently I read one for the first time in years that has, for now, taken top spot. It comes from Psalm 73, where Asaph (thought to be a contemporary of King David about 3000 years ago) is weighing against the apparent success in life of those who use and exploit others.
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“This is what the wicked are like,” he writes in verse 12 “– always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure.”
But he comes to realise this is not so, and reflects (from verse 19): “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.”
Then comes the verse that I find so enriching: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
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