Nathaniel Lee Hansen

How has so much of your on-fire certainty cooled despite your tossing on another slab of cedar and more kindling? Surely this is a failure of your divine pursuit, you think, believing the heresy that passion is the logical outcome of faith. What of the dark night of the soul? What of wrestling questions into a chokehold only to have your grip pried away? Like Peter, you say, Lord, to whom should we go? That is what you return to,…

Most often, your trouble is beginning – so many activities more alluring. Try as you might, you’ve never regretted having prayed (once you’ve finally started). You know of others in your church life who gush, sincerely, about prayer times. These people discomfort, fascinate you who can’t view yourself in a drenched state. And yet (and yet), you are jealous, desiring what you do not possess. You know their pools of deep communion did not create themselves, did not appear some…