Hard to Get

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened in the hurt
Do you remember when you lived down here
Where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread?
Did you forget about us after you had flown away?
Well I memorized every word you said.
Still I'm so scared I'm holding my breath
While you're up there just playing hard to get.

You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did you ever know loneliness?
Did you ever know need?
Do you remember just how long a night can get
When you are barely holding on and your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in your sweat?
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While you're up there just playing hard to get?

I know you bore our sorrows
I know you feel our pain
And I know that it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the one who loves me most
And after I have figured this all out
What I really need to know is

If you who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead and we cannot get free
From what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how you're leading me unless you led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so you've been here all along I guess
It's just your ways, and you are just plain hard to get

-Rich Mullins

Harder To Believe Than Not To

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.

-Flannery O'Connor

Losing Your Faith in College

To Alfred Corn, 30 May '62

I think that this experience you are having of losing your faith, or as you think, of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith...I don't know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience that you are having right now of unbelief...

As a freshman in college you are bombarded with new ideas...After a year of this, you think you cannot believe. You are just beginning to realize how difficult it is to have faith and the measure of a commitment to it, but you are too young to decide you don't have faith just because you feel you can't believe. About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do, and I think from your letter that you will not take the path of least resistance in this matter and simply decide that you have lost your faith and that there is nothing you can do about it.

One result of the stimulation of your intellectual life that takes place in college is usually a shrinking of the imaginative life...The intellectual difficulties have to be met, however, and you will be meeting them for the rest of your life...If you want your faith, you have to work for it. It is a gift, but for very few is it a gift given without any demand for equal time devoted to its cultivation. For every book you read that is anti-Christian, make it your business to read one that presents the other side of the picture.

-Flannery O'Connor