Faith in the Silence

I was driving home from work this afternoon.  It's been a busy week, and I'm tired. 

A song came on the radio, something about having lost the first love, and paper-thin faith, and wanting to feel the passion like before, and rekindling the flame, that sort of stuff.   My first reaction was a soul-deep groan, an overwhelming weariness, a sense that it was lovely to talk about rekindling the flame and wild passion and all that, but I'm just too tired to muster up the energy.

But then I got to thinking.  Frankly, sometimes life is just . . . ordinary.  I get up, I go to work, I come home, I cook supper, I go to bed.  I'm generally pretty content with that.  I love my job.  It's fun and challenging.  It keeps me on my knees in prayer.  And, to be purely pragmatic, it helps to pay the bills.  I drive to work and home from work.  I love the drive.  I spend a great deal of it just thinking God-directed thoughts.  Are they even prayers?  God and I chat.  It's casual and comfortable.  I like it.  I think he does, too.  My home life is good.  I've got friends who love me, a crazy dog, and a not-as-crazy horse (at least I'm raising ONE of my "kids" right!)  It's all good.  But it's ordinary.  I don't normally feel swept away by passion, excitement, and fire.  Maybe a warm glow, but hardly a raging fire.

And isn't that ok?  Does it really mean that I've lost my first love if every moment of every day isn't one of wild excitement and passion?  I got to thinking about the lives of the biblical heroes.  Abraham, for example.  He lived to be 175 years old.  He moved, escaped a couple of famines, fought a battle, told a lie or two, had a couple of kids, proved himself a man of faith, and died.  That's not a whole lot to be filling up 175 years.  I could do that in 70.  In fact, if we count up the instances in the Bible where Abraham actually had conversations with God, they add up to about 10 conversations.  That leaves long periods of silence, years and years and years where Abraham just went about living.  I'm pretty sure that there wasn't a whole lot of wild excitement and flaming passion for God every single day.  But he was a man of faith, in fact, the man who so exemplified faith that he became the example that Paul uses when he talks about being saved grace through faith.  Nothing paper-thin about it.

Now, maybe whoever writes these sorts of songs really has lost his or her first love.  Maybe he or she really is in danger of sliding away.  I suppose it's possible.  But perhaps it's also possible that we've become so addicted to an experience that when life slides into the ordinary, into the "long obedience in the same direction", we think there's something wrong. 

I love Chris Rice's song, "Smell the Colour Nine".  It doesn't talk about paper-thin faith and rekindling flames and that sort of stuff.  It talks about just keeping on going.

"I can sniff, I can see
And I can count up pretty high
But these faculties aren’t getting me
Any closer to the sky
But my heart of faith keeps pounding
So I know I’m doing fine
But sometimes finding You
Is just like trying to
Smell the color nine."

It's not always about the experience.  I know that my love for the Lord is deeper and wider than it has ever been.  We've been through an awful lot together, he and I.  We've passed through some turbulent waters.  And there are times -- times -- when life feels exciting and my love for him flames passionately and I feel him near.  I love those times!  But there are plenty of other times when I just know that I love him, even when I can't feel it.  There are lots of times when my faith is less like a flame of fire and more like the weight at the bottom of a punching bag that keeps me upright even though life is raining blows upon me.  It doesn't feel like much, but it's doing its job.

So I think it's ok that every day isn't a wild and crazy adventure.  I think it's ok to have days of companionable silence.  I don't panic over them anymore.

My heart of faith keeps pounding, and I know I'm doing fine.

Even in the ordinary days.

When God and I just hang.