Reflections on A Long Obedience

For legal purposes, I suppose I should let everyone know that the title of this blog was not my idea. I unashamedly ripped it off of a book written by Eugene Peterson called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction who himself ripped it off of Friedrich Nietzsche. I latched on to this idea of a long obedience because there is something romantic about the arduous pilgrimage that costs you everything. It's hard not to be struck by the long path of Christian faith that is fixed on the day when the beloved will be with the Great Lover.

This sounds great, but the reality is that I'm a weak man prone to wandering, disobedience, and doubt. My faith resembles more the "shifting sands" than the immoveable mountain. I'm the product of a culture that says you should at all costs gratify whatever emotion or desire you're experiencing at the time and then move on to the next. Peterson writes:

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.

The more I live, the more I know that I do not have what it takes to sustain this "long apprenticeship". Man, I love God's grace. I have cast my lot with Him, and he'll give me what I need to bring me to the end. He is good. I hope that this blog of mine will be a testimony to that grace, which make this pilgrimage possible. It will also be a place to share some thoughts, serious and quirky. I hope that you are blessed.