Proverbs 3:6
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Someone once said of the plays of William Shakespeare that you can tell what sort of a play you are watching by the ending. If someone is crowned King at the end, it was a history play. If everybody is dead at the end, it was a tragedy. If two or more couples are married at the end, it was a comedy. The basic difference between a tragedy and a comedy is this: in a tragedy, a noble man does his very best and aspires to heroic greatness but, usually because of some flaw in his own character, that “best” is not enough and all events conspire to ultimately destroy the hero. In comedy, however, the hero typically bumbles along like a well-meaning idiot careening from one disaster to another until, at the climax of the story, everything miraculously turns out well and his “paths are made straight” by the Higher Power of a Benevolent Playwright. This being so, it is worth noting that today’s verse emphatically casts us as comic, not tragic, heroes. That is a refreshing and humbling way of looking at life now and then. So let us do our bumbling best and trust the Playwright to turn it to laughter at the proper time.
