The poet Anne Sexton, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer who died in the last century, led a rather melancholy existence, one rich with insight yet one tempered with deep angst.  In the end, she took her own life.

    Along the way, Sexton penned some profoundly 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, to her, is devoid of hope.  Who really am I? she wonders.  If God makes the final call, 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, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."  Only if God has made himself known.

    The good news is that, in the person of Jesus Christ, he has.