I can’t remember when I first heard God referred to as the “Hound of Heaven”, but it’s been years. It was just a random factoid, though. I had no idea where the saying came from. I assumed it was probably a line from a famous sermon, maybe by John Wesley or Charles Spurgeon. Nope.
When I looked it up recently, I found that it is the title of a poem written in 1890 1 2. In it, the writer describes spending a lifetime running from God, only to find that 1) He can’t be outrun, and 2) He is really the only true solution that the writer had needed all along.
In this article, I’ll be quoting from the poem along with other classic authors while comparing their insights to what the Bible teaches. The premise is:
- God alone is the answer to everything we ask or seek.
- God alone is enough even if we have nothing else.
- Do I really believe that? If I did, how would it affect my life?
What if God asks too much of me?
For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
“Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson
Yet was I sore adread
Lest having Him, I must have naught beside.
As the poet says, I can be afraid — even though I know of His infinite love and care — that God will be too demanding. If I put all my trust in Him and follow Him completely, He may take away things that I think are important to me. And, that is true: He probably will!
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.
Matthew 10:37-38, see also Matthew 19:21-22, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, and Luke 9:57-62
Jesus taught that His followers must be willing to give up family and fortune, and to follow Him all the way to the cross. That is indeed a heavy demand. What if He asks me to give up my comfortable life and become a missionary in a difficult place? That’s what He asked of folks like Lottie Moon (39 years in China), Hudson Taylor (51 years in China), David Livingstone (30 years in Africa), and Elisabeth Elliot (11 years in Ecuador, 7 of them after her husband Jim was martyred there).
Even those who aren’t asked to move their life around the world must sacrifice things they value. My time, my money, and my choice of how to spend them now fall under His direction. My words and attitudes must adjust until they match His. Hardest of all, my pride must be harnessed until “whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Philippians 3:7-11).
Why would anyone give up so much? Because none of it has the eternal value that God gives. None of it can ever be “enough”, without Him.
He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.
Deuteronomy 8:3 (quoted by Jesus in Matthew 4:4 and Luke 4:4)
God Alone is the Answer
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
“Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson
…
“Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”
…
“Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.”
…
“Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!”
…
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”
The thing is, anything I might be asked to give up is really expendable when compared to God. That goes even for the very best things in life, such as the people I love the most. It certainly goes for things less valuable than people, things like money or fame or status. As the poet learned, all other attractions of life do not ultimately satisfy what mankind is searching for. Nothing else works.
As we look around our world today, isn’t this so very evident? We have more wealth and luxury than we know what to do with. Think back to when our country began 250 years ago. Remember what they did not have: air conditioning 3, cars 4, computers 5, telephones (of any kind, much less Internet-connected cellphones) 6, antibiotics 7, X-Rays 8.
We have so many sources of entertainment that we become frantic trying to do them all. Think of how over-scheduled our kids’ “play” time is with ball teams, music/dance/art lessons, and summer camps. Try to pick what movies to see or what programs to watch…or even just what streaming services to subscribe to. The choices are overwhelming.
And yet, even with all the “stuff”, we have widespread depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide. The stuff isn’t satisfying our real needs. We need God!
Peter and the other disciples had learned this. When Jesus asked if they were going to leave Him as so many others had done, he responded:
Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.
John 6:66-69
Other writers have expressed this same truth:
…for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God” by John Donne
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.
“Pensees XII” by Blaise Pascal (common paraphrase of his longer quote 9)
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
“Confessions” by St. Augustine
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
“Mere Christianity” (chapter “Hope“) by C.S. Lewis
God Alone is Enough
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
“Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
After his lifetime of running, the poet finally got a glimpse of God in His glory among “the hid battlements of Eternity“. He gave up. He had nowhere left to hide, and nothing left in life. Nothing, that is, except the God who had been pursuing him in relentless love.
But we have to live, don’t we? We need food, clothing, and shelter. I can’t just sit on a mountaintop and commune with God. I’d starve!
Jesus addressed this in the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about how God takes care of even the least of plants and animals, so we can trust Him to take care of us (Matthew 6:25-32). He reminded us that we love and care for our children, so wouldn’t God care much more for us, His beloved children? (Matthew 7:9-11)
Fun story: I once saw a small child, maybe 4-5 years old, pitching a fit in a grocery store. He was wailing at the top of his lungs “But, Mommy, I need candy! I NEEEEEDDD it!” He managed to stretch the word “need” into at least four syllables. 😁 That was 30 or more years ago, but the image stuck with me. Ever since, any time my husband or I say that we need something, we chuckle and say we NEEEEDDD it. We are reminded that there is very little that we actually need in order to survive, and that God is providing it quite nicely!
The truth is that God is to be my first goal, my highest priority, the only thing I really need. Everything else falls in line behind Him.
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
Even when I think that I don’t have enough, I do…as long as I have Him. He will come through for me, though not always in the way I expect or would prefer. When the Apostle Paul asked for a problem to go away, God said “No, but…..”
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
The goal is to cling to God, even at the expense of everything else, including life itself. It is to hold on so tightly that I can respond as three Hebrew captives did when told to worship the king or die:
…our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.
Daniel 3:16-18
God Alone is Worth It
All which I took from thee I did but take,
“Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’
The question is: What does God give in return? Will what I gain compensate for what I give up? The poet decides the answer is Yes. So does Jesus:
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Mark 8:35-37, see also Matthew 10:39 and Luke 9:24
Jesus didn’t just say that; He lived it:
“…who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.“
Hebrews 12:2
In the rest of that chapter, the writer of Hebrews continues to remind believers to persevere, not giving up even in the face of hardship. He tells them that enduring discipline from God trains them to grow closer to Him. Speaking to a primarily Jewish audience, he compares their experience at Mt. Sinai with the even greater “kingdom which cannot be shaken” promised to those who follow Jesus.
God Alone Loves Me — Eternally and Unconditionally
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
“Hound of Heaven” by Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
Seeing none but I makes much of naught (He said),
…
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
Everything the poet has experienced has taught him that he is insufficient on his own. Nothing else has lasted. Nothing else has satisfied. He finally stops and faces the One who has been pursuing him, “hounding” him.
When he does, he finds that his Pursuer has been the One loving him, all along.
Footnotes and Scripture References
- Here is a video of Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in the TV series “The Chosen“, reading this classic poem aloud.
- The archaic language in the poem can be difficult to follow. Here is a modern adaptation that tells the same story.
- Invented in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier.
- Began in the late 1800’s, with “Big Three” automakers in the 1920’s.
- The first early mathematic computing machine was built in 1848; First real computers in the 1940’s; COBOL programming language in 1953; Personal computers in the 1960’s; Apple in 1976;
- Alexander Graham Bell’s patent was in 1876. Car phones came along in the 1950’s. The first mobile phone was in 1973; first flip-phone in the 1990’s; iPhone in 2007; and Android in 2008.
- Penicillin was discovered in 1928.
- Discovered in 1895
- “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
