The Slow Work of Love

Think of the closest friend you have. Can you point to the exact day you became friends?

Probably not. There may have been a first meeting, a first real conversation, maybe a moment when one of you trusted the other with something that mattered. But friendship itself was not decided in a single afternoon. It's not like you passed them a note (though if you've been friends long enough, maybe you did) that said:

BFFs?

__Yes

__No

For those of you who don't know... BFF means "Best Friends Forever." We might try to decide friendships like this when we're kids, but honestly, even if the person checks "yes" it doesn't mean much. Because to make that friendship real, it takes time, effort, and persistence.

We have a kind of digital equivalent to the "check yes or no" note now. We call it a "friend request." And the "no" can sometimes be checked through that all too devastating "un-friending."

But this is all artificial. It's not how real relationships work.

Most relationships are built over one cup of coffee at a time, phone call by phone call, through seasons when you talked every day and seasons when life pulled you apart. The relationship grew because you kept showing up.

We know this instinctively about human love, but what about with our relationship with God?

We often treat the spiritual life like a decision rather than a relationship.

We “get serious” about faith, make a resolution, perhaps feel a surge of devotion, and then grow discouraged when, a few weeks later, prayer feels dry and the old habits creep back. We conclude that something has gone wrong. In truth, nothing has gone wrong at all. We have simply discovered that knowing God, like knowing anyone, takes time.

Jesus himself describes the spiritual life in exactly these terms. "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you" (Luke 11:9).

In English those verbs sound like single actions. In Greek they are present imperatives, which carry the sense of ongoing, repeated activity: keep on asking, keep on searching, keep on knocking.

Jesus is not describing a one-time request answered on the spot. He is describing a way of life. The person who knocks once and walks away has not understood the invitation. The door opens for the one who stays.

Luke makes the point even more plainly a few chapters later when he introduces the parable of the persistent widow: "Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart" (Luke 18:1).

This is big. Because it's not often that we're told precisely the purpose of a parable. When we are, it's to make sure we get the point.

Praying always and not losing heart belong together.

Most long relationships don't end over some single, grave, betrayal. It happens, of course. There are big moments where we cast blame, or get upset, or angry, and we hold onto resentments. Some people even do this in their relationship with God, and they cast blame wrongly on Him who loves them through the hardship, no matter.

But in most relationships that waver, it comes through long, quite, distance. We get busy. We may not be angry at the other person. We just "grow apart" over time.

Time spent matters. Relationships deepen in proportion to presence.

Couples who have been married fifty years can finish each other’s sentences not because of some mystical gift but because they have spent fifty years listening to each other, walking through difficulties together, celebrating together.

The same is true of the soul and God. The one who gives God ten quiet minutes each morning, year after year, comes to recognize his voice in ways that cannot be simply "rushed" or "purchased" with a one-time guarantee.

Admittedly, some of us move more quickly in our relationship with God than others. Some friendships move quickly, too. Particularly if the friendship is pivotal to enduring some kind of hardship, and is nurtured in the soil of a challenge, or toil.

Some people progress quickly in their spiritual life. Others grow over years. Truth is, God is free to pour out grace suddenly and abundantly. But even then, the grace is meant to be lived into, and that living takes a lifetime.

But let's be honest. There will be struggle.

Every relationship has friction, and in our relationship with God the friction always comes from our side. Even if we're blaming Him for it, let's be honest about it. The problem is in us, not Him.

He is not moody. He does not withdraw his love to punish us. He doesn't get bored with our company. We are the ones who build the obstacles: the distractions we refuse to set down, the sins we half-want to keep, the wounds we would rather protect than hand over, the shame that makes us hide the way Adam and Eve hid among the trees.

Saint Augustine confessed as much as he looked back on his years of running from God: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new” (Confessions, X.27).

God had been there all along. Augustine was the one who was absent.

And yet God waited for him.

When the Lord reveals his own name to Moses, he describes himself first by his patience: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6).

The Hebrew phrase translated “slow to anger” is literally “long of breath.”

God does not run out of breath with us. He is not panting, gasping, running out of air, reaching the limit of his tolerance. Peter says the same thing in the New Testament: "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

What looks to us like God’s delay is in fact his mercy. He waits because he wants us, and he wants all of us.

He is patient with us because he loves us more than we love ourselves.

We would have given up on us long ago. He has not. "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).

Every morning the invitation is renewed. Yesterday’s failure does not cancel today’s mercy.

If God is this patient with us, then our task is to become patient with ourselves and persistent in our confidence in him.

Saint Paul put it beautifully: "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).

The work is his. Our part is to keep showing up and not quit. "So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up"(Galatians 6:9).

Saint Teresa of Avila, who knew long stretches of dryness in prayer before she knew its heights, wrote in a prayer she kept in her own breviary: “Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.”

How do we live this?

First, fix a daily time with God and protect it as you would a standing appointment with someone you love. Keep it even when it feels like an awkward meeting, when it feels like the time was wasted. It wasn't. In fact, that's the time when love alone is what drives the relationship. One of the secrets of the spiritual life is that it is precisely when we feel no consolation, when things aren't "warm and fuzzy" in our relationship when the relationship deepens the most. Because the we are not growing in our relationship because of what we get out of it, but because of love.

Second, when you fall, when you do something that harms the relationship, return quickly. Do not spend days in self-punishment before coming back. The widow did not wait until she felt worthy to knock again.

Third, measure growth in years, not days. It's like looking at a jagged line graph that's moving, in its general direction, upward and to the right... but it's not a smooth, straight line. If you focus on one day, and judge the whole by one "dip" in the line of progress, you'll miss the fact that these little "dips" were often "bounces" upward to new levels of progress. Look back over the past year and ask where God has been faithful. You will likely see movement you missed while living through it.

Finally, speak to God honestly about the obstacles you have built. Name them. He already knows, and he is not in a hurry to leave. He is long of breath, and he has made room in that breath for you.

 

God Bless,
Judah