Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation; for thee I wait all the day long.
Psalm 24.
Spring advances slowly on this mountain. April is a time of expectant waiting. For all the anticipation, however, it is a season of seeming nothingness; a neither here, neither there time. It is a time when now there may be a promising rain, warm and gentle, and now a bitter snow. We know something is coming, something is emerging, but all palpable evidence of this something is lacking. We sniff at the still, small breeze; we cover our heads in the roaring of the storm; we look to the scudding clouds to see from whence they march in. When it all clears away, there seems to be no advance, just gray skies, immobility, and a fallow earth. So, we wait. We remain still. We listen, we watch, we join the earth in her silent vigil. April is a time when nature works unseen in the secrecy of her meekness.
Christians dwell in an age of Aprils. As the world around us lays aside hope, quavers restively in the long delay, takes matters into its own hands or simply turns to other things, the faithful Christian keeps watch. We are Simeon.1 Luke 2:25–35. But for all the docile passivity of these times, for all of the not knowing, it is a time to use well and wisely. The bow is bent but not released: it is a time of latent potency. The ground has gathered unto itself all nourishment, but is not yet productive: it is a time to tend to innermost things.
Contemplative prayer is like this much of the time. For all the tension, for all the unbearable nothingness, it is yet the time when the full tenor of the Christian life begins truly to emerge. It is the time when fidelity, faithfulness, and self-forgetfulness deepen. To seek to make the Christian life relevant to a fallen and apostate world, a world that abandons the wait, is to destroy Christianity. The shocking truth of the cross is its utter folly according to the wisdom of the age. But God’s folly is wiser than this world.2 1 Corinthians 1:18–25, 3:18–20.
Prayer drops deep in fallow times. Like a seed, faith emerges in the darkness, in the not knowing. When we advance ourselves to realize the kingdom, we are in abject delusion. When the kingdom advances to reveal to us ourselves, this is salvation.
Thus, we wait on this mountain, where spring comes slow; keeping watch, remembering the promise, not knowing the hour but ready,3 Matthew 25:13. willing, and in continual prayer.