Gregg Zegarelli

Aesop-A-Day

God’s Repose

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Gregg Zegarelli

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Thank you, Lord,

that, in my days of woes,

I should find, in you, a soft repose.

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The poem is tiny, but it’s doing a lot of work.

Thank you, Lord,
that, in my days of woes,
I should find, in you, a soft repose.

I. Ethos – what the poem is really saying

1. Gratitude inside suffering, not after it

You’re not saying, “Thank you, Lord, that you removed my woes,” but:

“Thank you, Lord,
that, in my days of woes,
I should find, in you, a soft repose.”

The “days of woes” are ongoing. The gratitude is not for changed circumstances, but for repose within unremoved hardship. That’s a very mature posture: the metric of divine goodness is not whether pain disappears, but whether there is rest in the middle of it.

Ethically and theologically, that’s closer to a Stoic-Christian hybrid:

  • Suffering is real and not denied.
  • The “win” is not conquest of pain, but anchored rest despite it.

2. Quiet confidence, not bargaining

There’s no bargaining, no “if you… then I’ll…” clause. The voice is:

  • Direct: “Thank you, Lord,”
  • Descriptive, not transactional: “I should find, in you, a soft repose.”

It carries an ethos of trust without negotiation. The speaker is not leveraging virtue, sacrifice, or promise — only acknowledging a gift already experienced.

3. The tone: humble and small on purpose

The voice is modest. No big theology, no long explanation of who God is, no doctrinal catalog. Just:

  • You (Lord)
  • Me (in my woes)
  • The relationship (repose in you)

The ethos is relational, not doctrinal. It’s the spiritual equivalent of a bow of the head rather than a sermon.

II. Pedagogy – how it “teaches” (even though it’s just a few words)

Even a short prayer like this has a pedagogical profile.

1. The three-move structure

The poem is a clean three-step form:

  1. Address – “Thank you, Lord,”
  2. Context – “in my days of woes,”
  3. Gift – “a soft repose.”

That structure quietly teaches the reader how to pray:

  • Start with gratitude,
  • Place it honestly in real pain,
  • Then articulate the specific grace you’re thankful for.

It’s an implicit template for micro-prayer.

2. Rhyme and softness match the content

“Woes” / “repose” is a simple but well-chosen rhyme:

  • woes – harsh, open, exposed
  • repose – closure, rest, shelter

Even sonically, the word-pair carries the movement from hurt to rest.

“Soft repose” is also doing double duty:

  • Repose suggests rest, abiding, settledness.
  • Soft modifies both emotional tone and theological stance: God as gentle refuge, not just rigid authority.

So the diction itself is pedagogical: it trains the reader to associate God not only with sovereignty but with gentleness.

3. Compact theology by implication

In a single sentence, several doctrines are implicitly present:

  • God as personal – “Lord,” addressed directly.
  • God as refuge – safe place in “days of woes.”
  • God as constant – “days” suggests repeated or long-term distress; the repose is still there.

What’s distinctive pedagogically is that none of this is argued; it’s assumed in prayer. The teaching happens by letting the reader overhear an already-existing relationship.

III. Conclusion – what this little poem is in your larger body of work

A few interesting things, especially knowing what you’ve written since:

  1. It’s a pre-theoretical artifact.
    Later, you write with heavy analysis (hope, empathy, AIS categories, rational deism, constitutional agnosticism). Here, you’re in a pre-analytic posture: a direct address, not a treatise. It’s the raw datum that later philosophy dissects.
  2. It models a stance you keep arguing for later:
    Even when you move into secular-civic or rational-deist language, you repeatedly come back to the idea that:
    • Life will hurt.
    • There’s no guarantee of rescued circumstance.
    • The crucial question is: how does the mind and character position itself within ongoing difficulty?
    This poem is an early, distilled version of that: “in my days of woes… a soft repose.”
  3. As a standalone piece, it works like a liturgical shard.
    It’s short enough to:
    • be a closing line in a larger prayer,
    • be recited in moments of acute stress,
    • be printed as a single, focused line on a page or card.

It doesn’t argue anything; it offers a stance:

In pain, I do not negotiate with God; I rest in Him.

That’s the ethos.
The pedagogy is the form: simple, repeatable, gentle.
The conclusion is that it still holds up — not because it answers theodicy, but because it’s honest about pain and honest about where rest is being found.

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© 2005 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.

This website https://greggzegarelli.com/prayer/gods-repose/

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