My Favorite Failure

The failure stares me in the face every day.

I started, several months ago, reading the Bible daily.  Or, rather, reading deliberately and deeply into the Bible daily.  No more of this glancing-at-a-verse-and-calling-it-enough.  Using a plan on a Bible app, I committed myself to reading the following each day: a chapter from the Old Testament/prophetic books, a chapter from Psalms and from Proverbs, a chapter from the New Testament, a chapter from Acts.

I did not make an official declaration to God or myself to anyone about this, sensing I would find it difficult to keep up.  It was, I told myself, an experiment—and yet it was clear to me, and clear to God, that I found this meaningful and crucial and would do it every day.

I did not.

I skipped, initially, on Sundays, because I was already reading Scripture in, or for, church.  Then I skipped some days I had off, when my routine became disrupted and I simply forgot in the chaos.  And then occasionally I just…didn’t do it.  I felt bad; I had stayed up too late the night before and felt too tired to read; I was driving to get a scone.

On the app, the structure of the plan matches the days of the plan with dates, commencing with the date you first begin the study.  So, for example: Day 1 is March 23, Day 2 is March 24, and so on and so forth.  If you do not complete one of the consecutive days, it is considered a “miss” and the date is marked in red even if you read it after the fact. 

So now, every time I open this Bible plan: it first scrolls up to where I ought to be—Day 145—before I thumb my way back through to where I actually am (which I will not share because I am so ashamed, but it is in the double digits).

It would be funny if it weren’t awful.  Every time I open my Bible app I encounter the glaring reminder that I failed a commitment to God x days in a row.

And yet, I have not stopped.

Almost anything else I’d have deleted.  I get upset when I miss my daily step count on my phone.  I will read all the way to the end of indexes in Kindle books so the book counts as “finished.”  But I have not deleted this app, and I have not stopped forging ahead on this plan I committed to completing.

It has been a painful, very sweet, exercise in grace.

The plan tells me I have failed, I am some days failing, I will fail.  I will let myself down and God down for reasons significant and small, profound and stupid.  I will falter because I was sick and am frail and couldn’t summon up the energy to crawl out of bed and look at Scripture; I will stumble because I wanted salt and cheese and prioritized them over time with God. 

And yet every day (that I remember) I still find riches in the word.  God still meets me there.  God shows up, always.  God shows up especially on the days I needed it and even immediately after I have neglected Him.  God is waiting for me even if I am not waiting on Him.  There is always another day to begin.  There is another start to make.

This is the Christian life made small, made granular. 

A colleague of mine at work recently, hearing about a project I had in mind to better my department, gave a short laugh.  When I looked askance at him, he said, “…it’s nothing personal.  Just, I hope you know—for your sake—something good like that will never happen here.  No one cares enough to get on board and make them happen.  It’s nice that you want to try,  but…”

The question hung in the air unanswered: why bother?

I think about that question every day I open my Bible app.  Why bother?  I have fallen behind to an embarrassing extent; I am not going to complete this plan in the time allotted and it will take longer; I could have completed 43 other plans in the time it is taking me to finish this one.  Why try at all when the sinful nature is so strong?

In the Pirkei Avot, a rabbi writes: “It is not your duty to complete the work…but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.”

I am a sinner, and will always be.  I am made holy by God.  That’s the tension I live in.  I will be redeemed, and I am being redeemed, but I also live in the anticipation of that full redemption.  I am not God’s finished product…yet, and I will continue to falter and to fail, but that does not mean I can permit myself to give up trying.

Because the effort, in the face of an honest understanding of who and how I am, is the point.

Opening the Bible app reminds me of exactly who I am: the recorded minutia of my failings.  It is also a reminder that God’s promise does not fail, even and especially when I do.  The days marked in red keep me humble.  They keep me grateful.  And yet they don’t keep me ashamed.

Look at that, I think in the morning as I scroll back far past where I ought to be to where I am.  God is looking, too.  He knows it; I know it.  But those days are not today.  Today is today.  I open the Scripture and I do my reading, and I know God is well pleased to meet me there.  Will always be.

So long as I keep stumbling, and falling, and showing up to start again.