When you’ve tried and failed, return again.
When nothing good seems to be happening, return again.
When faith turns to lament, return again.
When the boredom of the same old, same old begins to feel like a low-grade depression—when life seems colorless, repetitive, and without movement—return again.
Return to God.
God never promised that this life would be easy. In fact, He showed us something quite different through the suffering of His Son. Jesus, a man without sin, knew rejection, loneliness, fear, pain, and ultimately the cross. If suffering was not withheld from Him, why would I believe that faith would somehow exempt me from it?
I think about my father.
In my mind, he had almost a saintly stature—kind, compassionate, understanding, and steady. Yet I watched him spend the final thirteen days of his life struggling to breathe as congestive heart failure slowly took him. It was agonizing to witness. I couldn’t reconcile the goodness of the man I knew with the suffering happening before me.
When I received word that he had passed, I returned to his bedside. The struggle was over. His face was peaceful.
There was nothing left for me to fix, understand, negotiate, or control. There was only surrender.
Return again.
Maybe that is what faith asks of us—not that we never become discouraged, question, grieve, wander, or grow tired, but that we keep returning.
Return when prayer feels empty.
Return when God feels distant.
Return when life doesn’t make sense.
Return when you’ve fallen into old habits and old thinking.
Return when you’re angry.
Return when you’re tired of returning.
God is still there.
The spiritual life isn’t necessarily a straight path toward greater certainty. Sometimes it is simply the willingness to come back one more time—to sit before God with whatever remains of our faith and say, Here I am again.
“Come near to God and he will come near to you.” — James 4:8
Perhaps there is grace even in the returning. We don’t have to arrive with perfect faith. We only have to turn toward Him again.
