With our Faithful Faith Formation in a Formative World based upon Romans 12:1-8 complete, I still find myself sitting with an uncomfortable truth. I know in my head that faithfulness is the measure of a maturing faith, but sometimes it seems like faithfulness feels fruitless.
Neuroscience tells us when we access past memories, over time, our brain edits those memories each time we access them; they never remain like the original. That’s why for accuracy of the events, detectives want witness statements as close to the time of an accident or crime as possible. So maybe my memories leave me feeling like my efforts are more fruitless than they are. Yet sometimes it would be nice to see some obvious positive outcomes.
This isn’t me being needy; it’s me being human. I’m certain you’re human too.
Leave the Results to God
Those words are easier said than done. It’s hard to pour ourselves into things and wonder whether anything has taken root, let alone grown into something. As I wrestle with that tension – between faithfulness and visible results, I realize this is exactly the world Advent was born into.
I consider ancient Israel; a people who knew what it was to wait. To hope without much evidence. To act faithfully in the dark, not because outcomes were guaranteed, but because God is trustworthy. Some shared stories on long journeys, at meal time tables or around evening fires; in hindsight, they recognized and followed the evidence. Yet others neglected the evidence; it didn’t align with their expectations. To this day some still await the coming of the promised Messiah.
God With Us
Christ has come; the Kingdom of God is here but not yet fully realized. Advent isn’t a season of triumphant certainty. It’s a season still shaped by longing, ambiguity, and the ache of unfulfilled desire.
And Christmas doesn’t erase that ache. It names it; then joins us in it. “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus.”
The birth of Jesus is the moment God’s desire becomes flesh. Not a concept, not a doctrine, but God’s faithful longing for the world comes in person, a longing that finally meets our own.
The incarnation tells us something about our own desires too:
They’re not irrelevant, neither are they embarrassments.
Desires are part of what it means to be human, and part of what God came to redeem.
Even our desire to see results – to know that our faithfulness isn’t wasted, echoes throughout God’s story. For centuries, God’s desire for humanity seemed to bear very little visible fruit. Yet God remained faithful, persistent, present.
Then finally, in Christ, that drawn-out desire comes into view. Now since I’m on the topic of desire…
Taking a Break but Looking Ahead
Since starting this blog in February 2025, I have published weekly articles so it’s time to take a bit of a break for the Christmas season. Starting January 2026 (although I am working on it now), we start a series of 21 articles (beginning in the Garden and culminating in all things new – wink, wink), called “The Story of Desire.” It’s the raw, relational story of Scripture that reaches back to the beginning to where desire went off the rails, how God pursues us in our misdirected longings, and how Christ reveals God’s desire in its fullness.
Only after tracing this biblical story will I turn to the growing insights of cognitive science; not as a replacement but rather a tool for theology, to help us understand how desire actually takes shape in real lives like ours. The series concludes with a section that reveals Scripture’s vision of a community shaped by desire.
For now, as Christmas approaches, I remind myself that God doesn’t meet us in our certainty but in our longing:
Like a deer that strains toward water canyons, so my entire being strains toward you, God. My entire being is thirsty for God, the living God. When will I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1-2 – The First Testament – A New Translation by John Goldingay)
And Jesus is the sign, and the promise – that faithful desire isn’t wasted, even when results are slow to appear.