Abiding Faith (Lessons from Life's Dullest Days)

I've been doing some thinking about the sort of faith I've found helpful, partly in light of some fresh attempts at writing a series of devotional essays for publication.  As a pastor, I spend a lot of my time trying to communicate to others how I have arrived at my own personal faith in God through Jesus Christ.  Early in my ministry, I often stepped away from the podium after speaking about faith, only to realize that I had at best failed to bring much passion to the pursuit of faith, and at worst done a disservice to the gospel by leaving my audience with the impression that true faith is something other than the product of daily living in personal relationship with the risen Christ.  

One of my own personal challenges as I grow in faith is the temptation to believe that it is only in the exceptional, the transcendent and the critical that I am likely to make much progress in faith.  Tempting as it may be to believe that it takes some exceptional moment, high or low, in life to prompt my faith to grow another inch, the truth I've found in practice is much different.  In fact, it seems that our intuitive notion of needing some jarring event, some landmark "red-letter day", to spur our faith is actually quite opposite of what experience proves out.

In fact, it is on life's level plains, between mountain and valley, that we spend most of our time in this world. To encounter and engage God here is to grow faith that will withstand both highs and lows. Look for joy in the plain and ordinary, and it will seek you out in the time of deepest need or highest celebration.  It is in the ordinary, the unremarkable moments of life when faith must thrive; else, we will find that when our earthly support systems fail, we are left with little of substance to bind our hearts to God.  

Beyond the fact that faith must live in the ordinary to survive the exceptional, I also find that it is in the most unremarkable moments of life that I find the purest transcendence--the point where I realize that God's Spirit has invaded my world and is beckoning me to step closer, to breathe deeper, to taste more fully the sweetness of God's love for me.  If the Bible recorded the practicalities of daily life, rather than the extraordinary achievements of God's people, we would probably lose interest and never take its lessons to heart; yet I find the most extra-ordinary, the most otherworldly, the most divine evidences of God's favor in nights spent rocking my newborn son and singing him to sleep, in planting cabbages in the Springtime, or in the impromptu symphony of a Southern dog-days thunderstorm.  If I fail to see the hand of God at work in the silence as Elijah did, then I will have missed the very best moments of my relationship with Him.  If I enjoyed my wife's presence only on the day of our marriage, and on the few other occasions that represent either great joy or great sorrow, then I would find at the end of our life together that I had gained very little from being her husband.  On the other hand, by learning to savor time spent doing even such mundane tasks as hauling away the week's trash or painting the bathroom, and by making an effort to do those tasks together, we feel that we have found a level of joy in our marriage we could never have by waiting only for the highlights of special events and celebrations.  

Two points, then, that our marriage has taught me are that personal relationships are deepened and strengthened and grow in trust when we purposely emphasize sharing time and activity together, especially the mundane, and that this same trust and love allow us to cleave to each other in moments that break the daily rhythm of life, whether high or low.  It would seem that a process by which we (my wife and I, or my God and I) learn to trust and rely on each other is always part and parcel of shared experience, shared time, and shared affection day by day.  

As I was typing these words, I decided to take a "stretch break" and stepped into the next room to see how my wife's work on rearranging the guest bedroom was progressing.  As I stepped around the corner, she turned and we embraced each other and whispered our love to each other, as we do several times each day.  As we stood there hugging, I thought about these reflections and their meaning for my relationship with God, and I was reminded of the words of an old favorite hymn that says 

                                 

                                            I am loved, I am loved, 

                                           I can risk loving you; 

                                          for the One Who knows me best loves me most  

                                          ...we are free to love each other, 

                                          for we are loved...  

My prayer for you, my friends, is that you would hear the winsome call of God's Spirit and open yourself to the presence of His loving care, day by day.  May it be so for Jesus' glory!