It’s 9:45 pm on a week night, and I’m winding my way down the back roads of central Jersey, past the many small farms and wooded driveways between Bible study and home. Today’s end is the sticky heat glueing my t-shirt to my shoulder blades; the sweet perfume of clover wafting through the rolled-down windows; the fireflies flickering out beyond the reach of my headlights.

A CD from the 90s has been lodged in my Subaru’s disk player for the last two weeks, rescued from the recesses of the glove box. I respect the shameless lack of self promotion of indie rock groups like this one. You can’t find them on Spotify or Apple Music. If you didn’t have an auntie who bought you a CD at a concert she went to in the early 2000s at a small Bible college in Cannon Beach, OR, you’ve probably never heard of them, and you’d be hard-pressed to find them at all. As it should be.

Yet still, roughly 15 years since I first received this CD as a gift, the lyrics of the first track hit home:

the quest for faith is a lunar endeavor, not warmer and brighter, but darker and wetter /

I trudge and I slip as I reach out for daylight, but grasp only fistfuls of the light /

i wonder is doubt the way of faith sometimes / try to put it aside, but never leave it behind / balancing the weight of the state I’m in on the head of a pin /

Five O’Clock People, “Lunar,” The Nothing Venture, Pamplin Records, 1999, track 1, CD.

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Christians often talk about faith as though it’s a timestamped moment on the calendar. In some ways, it’s true: many of our testimonies include a marked moment of belief in the God of the Bible, and a subsequent decision to trust in Jesus for our redemption. Even the Roman centurion at the cross exclaimed in terrified awe, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

But the idea that faith is only one point on the graph of a linear equation does not seem to be the whole picture God reveals to us. Sometimes growing in faith feels more murky and shaky than it seems brilliant and clear. In many places in Scripture, we see examples of a faith that increases little by little. At times, we even see the people who are called “faithful” in the Bible step the wrong way before stepping the right way.

By the grace of God, the account we have been given includes the parts…
…where Sarah laughs at God’s promises before choosing to trust that He will do what He said He would do (Genesis 18).
…where God tells David to hit the “pause” button on building a temple he’s not supposed to build. (2 Samuel 7).
….where Elijah stands on a mountaintop calling down fire from heaven one moment, and in the next is running for his life into the wilderness and begging God to let him die (1 Kings 18-19).

Because we are fallen, even our walk of faith –– a virtue that may seem as though it should be more pure than any other –– seems to be more of a wobbling tightrope walk than a steadfast stride.

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and so the search is on again and again / to find what I’m doing wrong and save this love I’m in / but I don’t know where to start / it never used to be this hard

so I tread where angels trod / be found by me, my God

In scratching around the corners of my brain (and then the internet) trying to remember whether this poetic petition, “be found by me, my God,” is directly quoting Scripture or not, I came across Isaiah 55 and Jeremiah 29.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call upon him while He is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD, that He may have compassion on him,
    and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are My ways higher than your ways
    and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:6-9, emphasis mine

Isaiah is a book in which the perfect judgment and perfect mercy of God are underscored. God’s desire to be known by His people, despite their history of rejecting Him, brings us to the well-known verse, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.”

Robbed of its context, this verse is often thrown around haphazardly when God does something we don’t like. “Weeelll, His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not like ours…” How often has the Church offered this statement as a feeble platitude to those who are hurting, when in actuality, this verse speaks to His overwhelming compassion on His people?

Instead of abandoning us utterly, our betrayed Beloved calls us to seek Him while He may be found. His heart cry is that we would forsake the mud pit of our own making to come before His mercy seat.

His ways are not like ours because no human would offer a millionth chance at relationship after being burned so many times by someone who claims to love him. That kind of love is too much for us to wrap our minds around. And so we wrestle along with David: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6).

Isn’t this what makes the journey of faith much more like “a lunar endeavor,” as the five o’clock people put it, than a waltz through a meadow? Wrestling with a love too big for us, and trying to pin it down? Alternately seeking mercy and then resisting it? “Do it my way, God. Thanks for rescuing me, but I’ve got it from here.”

It sounds preposterous, stated so bluntly, but isn’t this exactly what we do when we profess faith in Christ’s atoning work for us on the cross, and then do our best to act out perfection on our own?

The next instance of something akin to “be found by me, my God,” is Jeremiah 29, which takes place in the context of Israel’s exile in Babylon. In this chapter, the Lord promises to bring Israel back from exile, back to the land He had promised.

But it’s not just about the land. God promises to welcome Israel home, into restored relationship with Himself:

“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, 

and I will hear you.

You will seek Me and find Me,

when you seek Me with all your heart. 

I will be found by you,

declares the LORD, 

and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations

and all the places where I have driven you,

declares the LORD,

and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”

Jeremiah 29:12-14, emphasis mine

The beauty of faith is that God’s promises far outweigh our minimized conceptions of them. He holds up His end of the covenant He made with us, but He also holds up our end. Though our perspective is limited, and our resolve is weak, His tender love for us is the reason we have faith in the first place.

He remembers our state, and He has mercy on us. “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:13-14).

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The sycamore tree marks the end of the road home. As I turn into my driveway and mull on the paradox of a faith that sometimes feels like moonwalking, and the grace of a holy, loving Father who draws us to Himself, the song’s final words cut through my reverie:

so I tread where angels trod / be found by me, my God /

hard-pressed, I must rest in You /

mystery meeting me in silence / in innocence