The war drags on in the Ukraine. I’ve struggled with how to pray for this prolonged conflict. Sure, I pray for peace, but the whole situation seems so immense and out of control. War is an indictment on us all.
G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) gives voice to my prayers. Some say he might be the most neglected writer of the twentieth century. G. K. was prodigious in his literary output at the turn of the last century. He wrote eighty books, four thousand essays and two hundred poems. He was a colorful character who loved to debate well-known sceptics of his day and earned a reputation for his ready wit. Chesterton was also a large man–6’4″ and 300 pounds. During the first World War, a woman asked him why he wasn’t “out in the front.” He quipped, “Madam, if you go round to the side, you will see that I am.”
While G. K. was not known as a hymn writer, one song survives that is attributed to him. He wrote it as a prayer which was later set to music. “O God of earth and altar…smite us and save us all.”