Writers 
Nobody cheers for the years
that it took to get here
Nobody cheers for the fourth time
you tried, and Tuesday,
for no apparent reason,
almost quit and didn't explain
I used to think of faith as a single epiphany,
a moment suspended in time
and place, captured for eternity
as a flash of insight, a leap of heart,
faith as a single act.
Nobody ever said that it was
really a thousand tiny increments
of will,
when no one was watching,
that I had to convince myself
that it was worth it,
to keep going.
Abraham didn't have his first vision of the promised land that week, Joseph didn't stumble out of the pit and into the palace,
There was a period of waiting,
in which they carried on
in rooms unseen.
I suspect that's where we're called to live, Lord,
not just in the miracles, but in the meantime,
not just in the testimony, but in the text,
not yet written, but already revised,
and still, every now and then,
I wonder whether it's not too late
to start a testimony.
Teach me, Lord,
to have faith in the meantime,
to live in the increments,
to obey in the ordinary,
long after the excitement has passed,
and all that remains is loyalty,
not to a cause, not to an idea,
but to the long obedience in things,
the small, relentless acts of following,
that already know how the story ends.
