The King's Illness

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 493, 3 December 1948, Page 5

The King's Illness

HE King’s illness has been so widely and so deeply deplored in the daily newspapers that The Listener can do little but ‘repeat what has already been read. It is not necessary to say again that the mews has brought anxiety as well as disappointment, or to remind our readers again of the uneasy link between, man’s proposals and God’s. But it may be worth pointing out that it has pleased Providence not only to accept our plans but to accept them in a way that the nation did not expect. For this is not the postponement that most of us carried as a possibility in the back of our minds. It has always been realised that the Royal family’s journey might be delayed for another reason — a reason that has not yet been removed; it is everywhere accepted that all journeys, those proposed by King and those proposed by commoners, are subject to the retention of health and strength, in other words are "God _ willing" journeys. But God is so often willing that we are shocked when He is not. We allow for the veto of men,

but only formally ‘for the No of Fate, and are usually thrown into confusion when it comes. The wise woman in George Macdonald’s novel who said that "God is aye agen planning" is the kind of person most of us find a nuisance. Most of us in fact find God a nuisance, or Providence, or Fate, or whatever we call that power beyond ourselves which can make nonsense of all our cleverness. But it is worth pausing a moment or two to consider how ridiculous our wisdom and strength always are when destiny takes a hand against us. A little pressure on an artery of a humble man in Buckingham Palace and months of planning by whole nations go suddenly out of gear. There is no reason to doubt that the irregularity will be correctedthat the King in a month or two will be completély well again, and that New Zealand and Australia will still see him, But whether the visit is delayed or indefinitely postponed the moral is the same--God is often against the kind of planning in which most of us so confidently indulge.