Faith Persists


Lately I've been dwelling in persistence, or, as Emily Dickinson has it, dwelling in possibility. Some of you have told me that you, too, focus the laser-beam of your attention on your own pain to the exclusion of any blessings that happen to surround you, whether singly or in a cloud. I'm to the point, today, where I am enumerating the blessings in a slogging mantra just to distract myself from the one absence in my life.

Pain is odd: it demands amelioration, instantly if not sooner. Pain says: Me, Now! and to get past that wall of need requires more patience and selflessness than I have, most days. Fortunately, there are lots of people around me who have pressing needs, and it's my job to attend to them, so I get distracted. Thank God.

Here I am, persisting in faith that my loving ways will reach someone who is afraid. Here I am, persisting in faith that love is much stronger than illusion, or guilt, or self-hatred, or false assumptions, or expectations, or age, or distance, or misapprehension. We'll see whether I'm right in persisting. But even if I'm wrong in my attempt, I have to persist in my faith. All things work together for good of those who trust God. Interesting: people who hear this tend to think: (1) how cheesy or (2) how deluded. In this edgy modern world, faith seems mawkish. So, I've noticed, many of us keep faith under wraps. Me too, sometimes. Maybe, though, the world is evolving, in its relentless fashion, and faith will be the new edge.