Faith is not always a felt thing. There are seasons when it feels distant, when prayer goes through the motions, when belief is a discipline more than a delight. This sonnet honors that dry season, and the slower, steadier kind of faith that lives through it.
The Sonnet
I do not feel You now as once I did, The warm assurance has gone cold and faint, The inner gladness that I cannot bid Is absent, and I cannot make complaint. I read the words I read in better days, I pray the prayers I prayed when I was sure, I walk the rhythms of the older ways, But what I felt before is felt no more. And yet I will not call this absence proof, Nor measure You by what my heart can hold, For You are God, both near and far aloof, The same in distance as in nearness told. So I will keep the practice, dry or sweet, Until the felt return makes faith complete.
Reflection
It is one of the quiet shocks of the spiritual life to discover that faith is not, primarily, a feeling. We come into faith on the strength of feelings, very often, the wonder, the conviction, the warm assurance that God is real and near. And then, sooner or later, the feelings withdraw. We are left with the choice that is the actual ground of mature faith, will I keep believing when I do not feel like it?
The saints have always said yes. They have called these dry seasons the desert, the dark night, the wintering. None of them are pleasant. All of them, faithfully endured, deepen the soul in ways that the easier seasons cannot. The faith that survives the absence of feeling is the faith that has finally become its own thing, no longer dependent on the weather of the heart.
If faith feels distant today, that is not a failure. It is, sometimes, the very season in which the deeper roots are formed. Keep the practice. The felt nearness will return, and what remains will be stronger for the dry.
