The poet Anne Sexton, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who died at a too early age in the last century, led an often melancholy existence, one of profound insight yet one tempered with deep angst.  In the end, she took her own life.

     Along the way, Sexton penned some richly constructed words about her relationship with God.  One of her most well known poems is this regard is "Rowing Toward God."  In this poem, which is actually a set of poems, Sexton writes of how she is constantly rowing toward God yet how this rowing is an "awful" rowing toward her goal.  For when she seems to reach God, he does not seem as friendly or welcoming as she thought he might be.  She realizes that however well she has lived or believed, God holds all the cards ("five aces," as she puts it).  Her ultimate destiny is completely in his hands.

     So hers is an awful rowing, an awful rowing toward a destination which, to her, deeply disappoints, a destination that is a picture of helplessness and, perhaps, hopelessness.  Who is she really, she wonders, perhaps as did the ancient Greeks who were acutely aware that however they lived the Fates made the final call on their end, that she lives and rows, seemingly to no avail?  What is the point?
     Indeed.  Apart from visible exchange with God, we might all wonder the same thing:  in a world which we did not make, a world in which a God seems to hold all the cards, world whose destiny we cannot possibly see, who and why are we?  Is there a reason beyond the moment?
     Only if, as the apostle John wrote, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Only if God has made himself known.