When Love Becomes Our Only Certainty

Abiding in God When Everything in Us Wants to Secure the Way

“Charity never faileth but beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

— The Evergetinos, citing 1 Corinthians 13:7

There comes a point in the spiritual life when even our desire to be faithful must be purified.

At first we imagine that fidelity means finding the right path and then walking it courageously. We seek clarity. We discern. We make decisions. We try to arrange our lives according to what seems to be God’s will. There is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, much of it is necessary.

But eventually the Lord leads us somewhere more austere.

He allows the path itself to disappear.

We find ourselves unable to see what comes next. Things that once seemed certain become uncertain. Doors neither open nor close completely. Questions remain unanswered. Circumstances constrain us. Others misunderstand us. We discover that there are things we cannot repair without doing violence to something deeper within the heart.

And then another temptation arises: to construct what God has not yet given.

This temptation can disguise itself remarkably well. It can appear as prudence, responsibility, discernment, even obedience. Yet beneath it there may be something far more subtle—the wounded dignity of the self that cannot bear to remain unresolved.

Vainglory does not always ask us to be admired. Sometimes it asks only that we be vindicated.

It wants our life to make sense.

It wants others to understand us.

It wants our sacrifices acknowledged.

It wants the ambiguity resolved.

It wants a path.

And if God does not reveal one quickly enough, it whispers that perhaps we must make one ourselves.

The Fathers understood how dangerous this could be. The battle does not cease simply because we have renounced obvious ambitions. Indeed, it can become more subtle precisely when we begin sincerely to seek God. We may renounce possessions and still cling to our reputation. We may surrender comfort and still defend our dignity. We may abandon worldly ambitions and quietly construct spiritual ones.

Thus the strange severity of the passage from the Evergetinos. A man may know mysteries, possess knowledge, perform miracles, endure hardships, and be stripped almost to his last garment—and still remain afraid that his life has borne no fruit.

What remains?

Love.

Not sentiment. Not consolation. Not even the assurance that everything will turn out as we hope.

Love as clinging to God when there is nothing else to cling to.

Perhaps this is why abiding is so difficult.

To abide in Christ means refusing to flee from the place where He has placed us merely because another place appears clearer, more fruitful, more recognized, or more secure. It means allowing the present moment—with all its incompleteness—to become the place of communion.

“Abide in Me, and I in you.”

There is almost nothing to accomplish in those words.

There is only a relationship to remain within.

Yet the whole ascetical struggle is contained there.

For everything in us that has learned to survive by controlling, explaining, defending, planning, anticipating, or constructing must gradually become still. We begin to discover that the deepest surrender may not be giving up some particular thing. It may be relinquishing the demand to know what our life is becoming.

The heart says:

Lord, I do not know where this leads. But I know You.

And perhaps that is faith in its purest form.

The Evergetinos tells us that perfect love “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” These are not four heroic achievements of the human will. They are what becomes possible when God Himself becomes the ground beneath us.

I can bear what I cannot change because I am held.

I can believe when I cannot see because I know the One in whom I believe.

I can hope when circumstances offer little reason for hope because my hope is no longer in circumstances.

I can endure because love has made remaining possible.

This is very different from resignation.

Resignation says, Nothing can be done.

Love says, God is here.

And suddenly the place we wanted to escape becomes the place where eternity opens.

The cell becomes larger than the world.

The hidden life ceases to feel like an interruption of the “real” life.

Caregiving, silence, prayer, limitation, unanswered questions, the relinquishment of plans—all can become the narrow place through which the heart passes into freedom.

For the great question slowly changes.

We cease asking:

How do I make my life become what it ought to be?

And begin asking:

How do I remain with Christ here?

That question is much more frightening because it gives the ego so little to build upon. There may be no new identity to assume, no position to secure, no explanation to offer, no future to announce.

Only Christ.

And perhaps this is where the eremitic heart truly begins—not first in geographical solitude, nor even in an external form of life, but when the soul becomes unwilling to leave God in order to secure itself.

The desert is precisely this place.

Nothing supports the heart except God.

Nothing explains the journey except God.

Nothing guarantees that our sowing will bear the fruit we imagined.

The farmer in the Evergetinos looks upon the earth and fears that all his labor has been futile. We know something of this fear. We look at years of prayer, sacrifice, obedience, failure, waiting, service, misunderstanding, beginnings that did not reach their expected end, and we wonder quietly:

What has come of it all?

But perhaps the question itself must finally be surrendered.

The fruit belongs to God.

Our task is to remain.

This does not mean passivity. Love can act decisively when love requires it. But action born from abiding has a different quality from action born from fear. It does not rush to secure the self. It does not need to force providence. It does not demand that tomorrow become visible before we consent to today.

It waits until love itself moves.

There is an immense freedom in this.

We do not have to manufacture the conclusion of our lives.

We do not have to defend the meaning of what God has permitted.

We do not have to persuade anyone that our hidden sacrifices have been worthwhile.

We do not even have to know what form our fidelity will eventually take.

We need only cling to Christ.

And cling is perhaps the right word, because there are seasons when abiding does not feel serene. Sometimes it is simply refusing to release Him while everything else within us cries out for resolution.

This is why the Evergetinos finally brings us to humility. The person who truly fears God discovers himself “unworthy so much as to utter the name of God with his mouth.”

After all our striving, we find ourselves empty-handed.

And perhaps only then can our hands finally receive.

No achievements.

No constructed future.

No vindication.

No claim upon God.

Only His Name whispered from the poverty of the heart.

Jesus.

And perhaps the whole spiritual life is contained there.

The soul remains.

Christ remains.

And in that mutual abiding, silently and imperceptibly, love does what our anxious striving never could.

It transforms us.

Not into the person we had planned to become.

But into the person who belongs entirely to Him.

And when love has become our only certainty, perhaps we discover that the path we spent so much energy searching for was beneath our feet all along:

to remain where God is,

to receive what He gives,

to endure what He permits,

to relinquish what He withholds,

and to love Him there.

For love bears all things.

Love believes all things.

Love hopes all things.

Love endures all things.

And love never fails.