Living in faith means of necessity living in contradiction to the world. Prayer is not evidently productive; to listen to God and Spirit is to not listen to advice and demands of this world.
Living in faith means not prioritizing all the things that the world prioritizes. Living in faith is crazy. The faith commitment will for a while move forward in the illusion that faith and prayer will be consistent with the unfolding of worldly circumstances. But sooner or later comes the painful realization that faith demands a path so divergent from the practicalities of career and social popularity and productivity and security and wealth accrual that faith is demanding something really crazy, and making that demand without guarantee of outcome. Through the heart, through ineffable longing, through an inscrutable rightness, through irresistible temptation away from common sense and security, faith proffers its offers, and we linger a little too long, feel a little too right, immerse irretrievably too deeply in that baptism that makes no sense to anyone else, and if we dare admit it, makes no sense to us.
We may turn from it for a while, worldly logic and necessity may momentarily prevail, but we can never forget our affair with faith, that glimpse of something we do not yet recognize, that touch so foreign and familiar…...faith….mad, maddening, marvelous, motivating faith, senseless, pointless, and essential.