Still Choosing

"For I am sure that neither death nor life ... will be able to separate us from the love of God." (Romans 8:38-39)

A person can leave one place broken and carry the breaking into the next. There can be a season when he does not think he can continue, and, if he is honest, does not want to. And then he chooses to continue anyway. Not because he is strong, and not because he has it figured out, but because he believes, some days more than others, that this faithfulness matters, that wounds borne in love mean something, that the long obedience, costly as it is, produces something worth the cost.

Some days more than others. That is the honest sentence, and it is not worth trading for a better-sounding one. Because that is what faith actually is for most people most of the time. Not certainty. Not a settled and shining confidence that never wavers. Just a person who woke up again, who is still here, and who has decided one more time that he is not going to put it down today.

You do not have to feel it. You only have to stay. And the thing that makes staying possible is not the strength of your grip but the strength of his, the love that Paul says nothing in all creation can cut you off from, not death, not life, not the worst of what you have carried out of the worst place you have been. Tomorrow you will get to choose again. That is not a burden. That is the mercy. He has already decided he will not let go; you are only being asked to wake up, and stay, one more day.