The Comedy of Death

The Convert

By G. K. Chesterton 1874–1936

After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white.
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

I was looking for another poem of Chesterton's and ran again into this one.  As I read the last line, the idea of Lazarus' raising came back to me...the other day I was listening to a talk about Cowper and how the idea of Lazarus' raising gave him hope.  I don't know that the story has ever done the same for me and now pondered these two heroes of mine - I wonder what I have missed in the story.
The idea of being saved out of lamentable conditions - God invites us to cry out to him.