“…Everyday I put faith on the line.  I have never seen God.  In a world where nearly everything can be weighted, explained, quantified, subjected to psychological analysis and scientific control, I persist in making the center of my life a God whom no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, whose will no one can probe…

Everyday I put hope on the line.  I don’t know one thing about the future.  I don’t know what the next hour will hold.  There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe.  Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection.  I don’t know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world.  Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ’s love…

Everyday I put love on the line.  There is nothing I am less good at than love.  I am far better in competition that in love.  I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark mark than I am at figuring out how to love another.  I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way.  And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily–open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better that succeeding in pride…”

p. 76-77, Eugene Peterson, The Long Obedience in the Same Direction

According to Peterson, these are some of the risks and costs (or hazards as he puts it) that are apart of our lives as Christians.  He concludes this chapter on Psalm 124 with the idea that faith develops out of the most difficult aspects of our existence instead of the easiest, and that “it is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shape our days.”  His power is made perfect [realized, tangible] in our weakness.  We put our faith in God, our hope in God, and our love for God on the line not as the ends, but as the means, because God’s nature, God’s provision and God’s love shape our days.