Yesterday was a good day. We were able to relax and yet still get some stuff done that needed to be done for a while. I like days like that: where you feel as though you’ve done some work but still had fun.

I haven’t finished book “The Way” yet. I’m over half way, but I’m bogged down and can’t seem to read it quickly. Part of it is because I’m frustrated that it’s not telling me anything about Orthodoxy. Not really, anyway. It’s tearing down Protestantism in order to make the case for Orthodoxy. The author has lost my respect and I’m having a hard time listening to what he has to say. I don’t want to hear why something is wrong to justify why something else is right. If the priest’s intentions were to make me feel more positively about the Orthodox Church, this wasn’t the book to give me.

When I’m in the catechism classes, I can see how my arguments for what I believe can be shot down. And I can see where the priest is coming from. But part of what I believe is from my experience, part of it is from what I know, and most of it is on faith. And I don’t know how to explain faith. It’s not the rationalistic part of me, and I can’t really defend it in an argument. I just know what I know, and maybe what I know is faulty, but I don’t think God has abandoned me for it. Just like God hasn’t abandoned me when I haven’t read my Bible faithfully, or fasted regularly, or made quiet times to pray, but pray on the go all the time. I even know he hasn’t abandoned me when I don’t hear Him.

I’m really used to hearing God talking all the time. The last while I’ve realized that I haven’t been hearing as much, and I want that back. And I wonder why I don’t hear, but if I really think about it, I think I know why. For quite a while now (years, in fact) God has asked that I fast and make quiet times to pray, which I haven’t done. It’s disobedience through procrastination. Like Paul says, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”(Rom. 7:15)