Faithful Even When

You could reasonably object that praying while you do not believe it is a performance, and that you would rather be honest and stop.

Lord, that is where we are. Last night's prayer came out flat. The words were said, they were not believed, and finishing felt marginally less awful than stopping in the middle.

Paul is quoting something the churches already sang or recited, and it has four lines. If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. The third line is not deleted by the fourth. They stand next to each other and they are about different things: the third is about a settled repudiation, the fourth is about a man whose faith has gone thin. Paul does not blur them and neither should we.

And the reason given in the fourth line is not that God is patient with us. It is that he cannot deny himself. His faithfulness is not a disposition he is currently in and might come out of. It is what he is, which means it does not consult our condition before it holds.

So we are asking you to be what you are while we cannot manage what we are supposed to be. We are not going to pretend the belief is there this morning. We are going to say the thing anyway and let you be the one holding it.

And then, awake and unresolved, do this: pray the flat prayer again tonight and put the doubt into it by name, in the words you would use to a person. Do not wait for a better version of yourself to arrive first. There is no evidence in this passage that one is coming.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 115 is At the Door (Revelation 3:20).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna