When does perseverance become stubbornness? When is it necessary to stop, and redirect? And when is it necessary to keep going, no matter what, despite the odds, until the bitter end, even if it seems that all hope is gone?

For the majority of people there is (often unconsciously) a cost-benefit analysis. At what point does this struggle become “not worth it”? That question can apply to pretty much any situation in our lives, from a simple shopping trip, to jobs, to a marriage. For many people, those who “stick with” something after it has proved to be draining and futile are foolish beyond belief.

This Sunday’s readings are pondering this question, but with faith and life as the pivot. At what point do we give up on or renounce our faith? For the early Christians, the answer was simple: we don’t. Even death was not a good enough reason to give up on God. Loss of job, home, even family and community (back in a time when family and community were everything, and to be an outcast was truly terrible) – all these were worth enduring for the sake of Christ, who endured the loss of all things in order to heal and redeem us.

There is a promise, that in the end all things will be well. One day all will be healed, and renewed, restored, reconciled. But between now and then there will be wars, famines, treachery, hatred, all kinds of terrible actions and disasters, natural and human-made. What will make us give up on God?

Perhaps the reason why people of faith are able to endure, to not give up on God, is the belief that God has never and will never give up on them. I say belief, but it’s more a kind of “knowing” that cannot be explained in any kind of tangible or empirical way. It’s a “knowing” that is seen in the lives of those women and men of faith who came before us. And when all else is stripped away from us, for some it is then that God becomes closest. There is no distraction left, no more cost-benefit analysis to be done. There is only our self, and God. All else is gone. And at that point we know – when all else abandons us or is taken from us, “nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”

Perhaps we persevere because God never gives up. And because somehow, in the end, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Revd. Talisker

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