perseverance

The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us.

Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.

- Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Photo: Wild Bleeding Heart, seen Sunday - Elgin Park & Stewart Farmhouse, walk, Surrey, BC.

modern Rip Van-Winkle

Imagine waking up after being in a coma for 19 years. That's what happened to 65-year-old Polish man Jan Grzebski. He awoke to a new world where his children were married, he had 11 grandchildren, and his country was now a democracy.

His wife Gertrude is the real hero in this story. She turned him every hour of every day for those 19 years so that he wouldn't get bed-sores. Kind of puts a new light on the expression "It's always too soon to quit" -- or any other maxim about perseverance, for that matter.