Give God the credit for the things in your life

Life Lessons

September 8, 2010

By David Key Lake Oconee Breeze Lake Oconee Breeze Wed Sep 08, 2010, 08:00 AM EDT

LAKE OCONEE — Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone. These lines first appeared in “Solitude,” a poem printed in the February 25, 1883 issue of the New York Sun.

The author was Ella Wheeler, a Wisconsin-born journalist and poet, who received $5 for her work. The poem was published again in May of that year in a collection of Miss Wheeler’s called Poems of Passion. The collection was a great financial success. To her dismay, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, (now married) found the poem, word for word, in a book by John A. Joyce, published in 1885. The poem had a different title, “Laugh and the World Laughs With You,” but Joyce claimed it as his own. Mrs. Wheeler offered $5,000 for any printed version of the poem dated earlier than her own. Neither Joyce nor anyone else ever produced one, but he continued to reprint the poem as his own until he died in 1915. As a final irony, he had the two famous lines chiseled on his tombstone in Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, DC. Since that time, however, publishers have given credit where credit seems to be due — to Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Give God the credit for all that has happened in your life. That is where it is due. Wishing you much love and much light.

—The Rev. David W. Key, director of the Baptist Studies Program, is involved in recruitment, admissions, student life, counseling, placement, and development functions for Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He teaches in the Contextual Education program. He is the founding pastor of the Lake Oconee Community Church at Reynolds Plantation. Contact him at (404) 727-6350 or dkey@emory.edu. His

column appears weekly in this space.

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