A Devotion from Arthur John Gossip

Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. 
-Habakkuk 2:3

Faith, hope, love, these are great gifts. Yet not all of them together will bring you through with honor. For that, something more is needed. Remember, says Saint Anthony, of all the virtues, perseverance alone wins the crown. Have you the courage that, checked and beaten back, can hold its ground and never think of giving way? For that is often what I need in those who would serve me, says God. Though it linger, wait.

“We all thought,” said Baxter, speaking of the Civil War, “that one battle would end it, but we were all very much mistaken.” And so most of us expected that our spiritual lives would move on much faster than they have. We knew we had certain temptations, but we were going to knock them on the head and put an end to that; yet perhaps some of them visit us to this day. We were aware that we were prone to this and that sin and weakness. But Christ would break them for us. Yet, perhaps, some of them persist.

We saw the glory of life as Christ led it, and our hearts ran out to that eagerly. But it has proved difficult to weave our characters into his likeness! We too have need of Paul’s prayer for his friends—that our faith may become a thing of power. For it seems sometimes curiously ineffective, doesn’t it?

Perhaps you are haunted by a feeling that after all your faith and efforts you are painfully little changed, that if Christ were really in your life surely there would be more to show. Look, your heart cries, how it was in his time! Everywhere he went were extraordinary happenings, there for all to see. But I, what can I show?

Into a liquid is dropped one drop, a second, and there is no result—another and another—and then one more, precisely like the rest, and all of a sudden everything is changed! And day by day doggedly we pray and hope and toil and believe. And what is there to show for it? Not much, to outward appearance. Yet, is far more going on than our eyes see? And one day, one other prayer, one other ordinary act of ordinary faith, one more looking toward Jesus Christ, may bring the long process to its culmination, and we waken satisfied because we are in his likeness—at last.