Obedience in the Fire

The Long Yes of the Heart

“Remain where you are, and the fire will teach you what obedience truly is.”

— Abba Arsenius (after the Desert Fathers)

Disciple:

Abba, does God at times make us wait for years, even when it seems that He Himself calls with great clarity and directness?

Arsenius:

Yes, my child. Often He calls quickly, but He leads slowly.

Disciple:

This waiting confuses me. It feels unlike the story of the rich young man. There, the Lord stands before him, Love Incarnate, and speaks plainly: “Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and come follow Me.” The man hesitates and walks away sad. In my heart, the ache feels reversed. I have waited for decades, partly from blindness, partly from my need for security and familiarity. Now that the blinders have been removed, my heart longs to run to the Beloved, to run the path set before me. And yet I am told to wait.

Arsenius:

You are mistaking delay for refusal.

Disciple:

But Abba, it does not feel like obedience. It feels like resistance. Like hesitation wearing the name of discernment.

Arsenius:

Then listen carefully. The Lord did not ask the young man to wait because his heart was still divided. He asks you to wait because your heart is being unified.

Disciple:

How can waiting unify the heart?

Arsenius:

Because desire purified in waiting becomes love freed from demand.

There is a haste that belongs to fear and a haste that belongs to love. God extinguishes the first so the second may burn without smoke.

Disciple:

Yet the longing is painful. It feels as though I am standing at the threshold while the door remains closed.

Arsenius:

Many stand before closed doors because they are unready. Some stand because God is finishing the house inside them before letting them enter another.

Disciple:

But Abba, years have passed. Strength fades. Time feels precious now.

Arsenius:

Time is precious precisely because it belongs to God, not to you.

Do you think Abraham understood why the promise delayed? Or Moses why he wandered decades before returning to Egypt? Or I, why God called me from the emperor’s court only to bury me in silence for years before peace came?

God is not slow. He is thorough.

Disciple:

Then what of my fear that this waiting is simply my old hesitation returning in a subtler form?

Arsenius:

Ask yourself this:

Does the waiting make you excuse yourself, or does it strip you?

Does it comfort you, or does it crucify you quietly?

Does it preserve your former life, or does it leave you poor and watchful?

If waiting burns rather than soothes, it is not resistance. It is obedience in the fire.

Disciple:

So the pain itself is not a sign that I am disobeying?

Arsenius:

No. It is a sign that you are no longer asleep.

The rich young man went away sad because he chose possession over presence. You remain aching because you have chosen presence even without possession.

Disciple:

Then what am I to do in this season, Abba?

Arsenius:

Remain where you are without letting your heart settle there.

Run inwardly, even while you stand outwardly still. Let your obedience be swift in the heart and patient in the body.

God is teaching you not how to begin, but how to follow without conditions.

Disciple:

And when the door finally opens?

Arsenius:

You will not rush through it.

You will recognize it because by then you will have already died to the need to arrive.

Disciple:

Pray for me, Abba.

Arsenius:

I pray that your waiting becomes worship, and your longing becomes a dwelling place for God.