feeling the walk

Some days I don’t feel like much of a disciple.

On those days my prayers usually begin with: “Lord, help me to do Your will…” This is not a noble aspiration as much as it is a concession that on some days I lack even the desire to follow God. I’m asking Him to give me the want to seek Him because I’d rather be doing what I’d rather be doing and, while I know this is wrong, I don’t particularly care. Except enough to ask Him to overcome my selfishness.

In the end, on those days, He does all the work. He inspires me if I’m inspired at all, and if I’m not inspired, if I wallow in selfishness from dusk ‘til dawn, it is His grace that restores me. Because He doesn’t lose all patience with me I have the opportunity to try again tomorrow.

This is the walk. This is the walking. Sometimes wanting to take the next step, sometimes thinking about how much more pleasant it would be to sit down and sometimes just lying down, your whole body flat against the path you should be hiking, a blatant, obstinate, full-body protest to the call.

This is the walk. And some days I don’t feel like I’m even moving. The funny thing is there’s no rhyme or reason to it. I can feel devoted and deeply engaging in pursuing Jesus one day and I can feel complacent and lazy the next. I end up deciding that the task at hand is just to trudge on through. You get somewhere when you’re walking because you keep taking steps, big steps, little steps, sometimes steps with considerable breaks between them, but you keep taking steps. You keep moving forward.

It’s not rocket science, walking, and it’s not particularly fast. I just try to keep moving.

Because of all this, because it's slow and hard and sometimes I'd rather just be selfish, some days I don’t feel like much of a disciple. Today is one of those days.