On the Long Faithfulness

Dear brother or sister in Christ,

There is a temptation in every household to measure faithfulness by the dramatic moment. The conversion at the altar. The verse memorised at midnight. The decision to go, the decision to stay. These have their place. They are real. They sometimes mark the beginning of a long road.

But the road itself is something else. The road is built by what one does the day after the dramatic moment. And the day after that. The road is built by the same small acts, repeated for so long that they become the shape of one's life — the prayer said even when one does not feel like praying, the Bible opened even when one would rather close the eyes for ten more minutes, the kindness shown to the same person who tested one's patience yesterday.

This is what the New Testament writers most often mean when they speak of fruit. Not the showy single fruit at the top of the tree, ripe for one season, but the steady yield of an orchard maintained for thirty years. The tree pruned in winter. The soil tended in spring. The watering in summer. The gathering in autumn. And then it begins again.

There is a sense in which all of the Christian life is one long faithfulness — punctuated, perhaps, by a few bright joys, and by a few sharp sorrows, but on the whole, simply walking. The fathers of the desert called it stability. A monk did not move from his cell, because to keep returning to the cell was the formation. We are not all monks. But all of us have a cell of some kind — a place, a discipline, a daily set of small fidelities to which we return.

Take heart, then, if your day was not extraordinary. Take heart if today's prayer felt thin. Take heart if the household chores were the only thing accomplished. The road is being built underneath you, even when you cannot see it. The Lord is the master builder. He has not lost the plan.

We bless you in the long quiet road.

May the Lord bless thee and keep thee, today and every day.

A brother in Christ