Miles to go before I sleep.

There's always a space after a promise that has yet to come to fruition. It is filled with the breath of apprehension and a discerning suspension of belief and disbelief.  Before the redeeming of the promise, we can be hopeful or resigned...... we can obey or disobey.  Like jumping out of a plane with a parachute that someone has promised will open at the right time. 

In the meantime.....you're caught in a time gap that is making you plummet to the ground.  How do you remain hopeful rather than get lost in dread?  How do you keep calm and confident that the promise of a safe landing is going to happen? The parachute will open right?  You promised. 

Life's tensions, between a promise made and a promise kept, is where people of Faith find themselves living.  Sometimes, this space is minor. A hop and a skip and you land on your feet.  Sometimes though, this space is as large as the Milky Way.  A promise and the waiting in the gap may all be that our lives provide us.  We may never see the redemption side of the promise.  This is often what draws us away from believing in the mystery and magic of God's promises. Doubt draws circles around the heightened expectations of hope. That niggly sense of disbelief creeps in through a crack.  The space remains a large crevasse......with no way of seeing the other side of it.  Is this what is termed as "Blind faith?"

The way I see it?  It's all good.  The struggle, the promise, the swaying on the suspension of belief and disbelief, the choice between obeying and disobeying, the blindness ........ it's all good because this is what fuels our challenging questions. This is what makes us breathe curiosity!  This is what draws us out of our inherent sleepy slothness to punch our way to a deeper awareness and belief. There may be evidence one day.  Faith, as it stands alone is believing in the evidence before it arrives. 

A lot of promises fall off the apple cart.  Some even stay on the apple tree and hang on beyond harvest until it finally drops to the ground bruised and mushy only to absorb into the nutrients for next year's germinal bits of Faith.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that we continue to make the promises in order to dwell in the learning that happens during our time suspended in that zone. 

No doubt it feels good when a promise is kept, especially the ones we fashion for ourselves.  Promises are goal drivers.  But the thrill is always in the space where we explore the tenuous landing.   The key to riding this tension is to remember that we are all doing the best we can do at any given moment, and that hope is the salve for remaining patient. 

........and then of course there's that big concept called Trust........ in difficult times, trusting in the unfolding universe can be almost impossible, especially when we feel no power or control in how a "promise" is played out.  That's the time when its best to pray.  I'm praying a lot these days.