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A Long Obedience

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, (Hebrews 12:1)


                I think I have to blame choir practice. Yesterday, we were talking about the Gospel Concert we give every spring and I think my mind finally connected with the fact that its only a couple weeks away. For me, it seems to mark the end of the season. I may be here a little longer, but that time is the time of closing things down here and preparing to go north. As so often happens, my mind kicks into overdrive, but as I look around, I realize that I can only lift my tires off the ground. I have to get ready, but there’s not much that can be done yet. I am going to need that, and that, and that, and those are staying here, and…. The result is instant stress, instant insanity. I’m caught between “Hurry up!”  and “NO, not yet.”
                It just so happens that yesterday, I finished re-reading Mere Christianity. If you haven’t read it yet, or if you haven’t read it recently, you should. Putting it away, I pulled out the next book on life that I brought with me to read: A Long Obedience In The Same Direction, by Eugene Peterson. It deals with the chapters from the Psalms called the Songs of Ascent. They were the songs the Jews sang three times a year as they made their way up to Jerusalem. How appropriate, to share in their pilgrimage as I prepare to make my own. Of course, their pilgrimages didn’t tend to involve moving a small household of stuff, but that’s just details.
                The title of the book comes from what might be thought a curious source. Fredrich Nietzsche wrote, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’ is . . . that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.”
                I’ve been praying for a number of things for what seems like quite a while. The most important of these is Dad. One of my friends who has also been praying has expressed discouragement because she, too, has been praying and God seems to do nothing. It’s like being on a road to somewhere you’ve never been. It doesn’t matter how near place A is to place B, it feels like it takes forever. When you’re waiting for God to do something, what takes a year may feel like it’s five or ten if you don’t know what to expect. When you know the way, it feels like it takes a lot less time.
             But with God, the journey requires a long obedience in the same direction because that’s what builds the virtues and the character that is God’s goal

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