Now, That’s What Faith Looks Like!
It’s was girls night out. My friend and I were meeting at her house to pack a picnic and head to the beach on a perfect Michigan, summer night. As she arranged things in the back of the car, I headed inside to fill my water bottle. When I got to the kitchen, across the great room, sprawled backwards on the rocking chair was her husband. He didn’t look so good.
His face was flushed, hair disheveled, puffy, tired bags underneath his eyes. Running his fingers through his hair, he said, “Lori, if anyone ever tells you to go back to school to get your masters degree when your 50 something, my advice would be to run the other way.”
“The technology is insane. There’s one issue after another. When I write a paper I spend hours trying to figure out how to get it into this crazy program.” Big sigh. “I don’t know what I was thinkin.”
Two classes away from finishing his degree. He’s battled through every class and is just about to cross the finished line. A gifted high school parapro, the calling to get this “cursed master’s degree”, has been lifelong. If he was willing to put in the work he could help more students, steward the gifts in his lap, maybe even alter the life trajectory of a student or two.
You know silly, insignificant stuff like that.
But right now, all of it seems like hogwash. Did he really need that degree or could he be just as effective making latte’s, intersecting teens lives through the local coffee shop? Maybe he fooled himself with idealistic dreams that this actually mattered. Did he really see a bright light flash and hear the Lord’s voice call?
In the fatigue of faithfulness it can feel almost impossible to finish.
But if I’m not mistaken carrying a cross is heavy and painful. Thank goodness our walk of faith doesn’t always mean the heaviness of the cross. Some days it means toasting with friends at a wedding in Cana and others preaching to 5000 on a hillside and running out of food. A life of faith doesn’t always mean cruising in your convertible with the top down.
Faith can look like a lot of things. That day peering across the living room it was a frustrated man with two more classes to go, battling his laptop in a rocker.
Keep going friend … You’re almost there!
P.S... no real photos were used in this post to protect the innocent 😆
~ Lori
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Who, in your life, comes to mind when you think, “Now that’s what faith looks like!”