I have been, upon occasion, flippant in my faith. Not in how I study it or how I live it, but in my understanding of its sacrifices, its sufferings. I have, for instance, thought to myself that I would die for a stranger, I would die so someone else can live. Which was not meant to diminsh Christ's sacrifice, but more to glorify myself in my own eyes. So perhaps "flippant" isn't the right word. Perhaps the right word is "prideful."

I have been, upon occasion, prideful in my faith.

As usually happens in such instances, life serves to humble me. To remind me of my arrogance, my foolishness, my utter lack of understanding.

Perhaps it *is* easy to die for a stranger. Perhaps a quick death and an even quicker ascension to the glories of heaven would be easy to tolerate for a stranger. And perhaps what Christ did in dying for all the world is nothing so simple, nothing so swift, nothing nearly so painless.

Perhaps what Christ did is more akin to finding out someone you love has relinquished his faith. Perhaps it's more akin to knowing that you can only talk about your faith in pale, inadequate words and hope and pray he listens to what cannot be said as well as what can. Perhaps it's imagining his failure to understand, to believe. And watching him stumble in the absence of that belief. And years of steadily estranging holidays (not because you fail to love him, but because each year he finds it more and more impossible to tolerate your casual mentions of your faith). And more years of aching at his wayward decisions and his anger and his hopelessness.

Perhaps what Christ did is more akin to years of feeling pain for all of that (pain made worse because you know he, too, is in pain), and willingly and gladly embracing that pain if only it might mean that someday he will return to that faith. Perhaps what Christ did is more akin to *that*.

And I can only be humbled at His willingness to bear that pain, to take it on in the hope of a single soul turning toward Him. Because I don't want to. I want this fixed, solved, immediately. (Wave a magic wand.) I don't want years of struggle and fear and pain.

And yet. And yet. Oh, God, if I must, if I must watch him falter and stumble for the rest of my life just so he comes to You in the fullness of time, I will. I will do my best to keep praying and hoping and loving him. But please help me? Help me stand strong and steadfast in the face of whatever may come.