Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

The process of crossing the threshold is demanding for each and every one of us. When the cracks appear in a long-held belief, it causes anxiety and pain. As the certain world is replaced by great uncertainty, the risk is that we cling to what we know more than ever. The gravitational pull of the familiar exerts itself, no matter how dysfunctional

But fear doesn’t make perfect love untrue any more than passing clouds make the stars untrue. I know how to find my way back to truth, to love, to peace, to God again. All I have to do is be still and breathe and wait for the clouds and fear to pass.

As King avows in one of his religious sermons, “I do not pretend to understand all of the ways of God or his particular timetable for grappling with evil. Perhaps if God dealt with evil in the overbearing way that we wish, he would defeat his ultimate purpose.”84 Given this acquiescence of religious faith, the very idea of an “ultimate purpose” (a

the biggest obstacle to reinventing ourselves may be simply a kind of paralysis of hope.