If I wait for the perfect emotional environment to trust Christ, I will not trust Him. If I wait for my soul to feel strong, it will never be strengthened. Duty forces me to take my medicine. Duty forces me to eat the food God sets before me. Duty forces me to look up when everything in me wants to look down.

In one of his Morning Exercises, William Jay pauses over John’s simple but searching line: “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ…” (1 John 3:23). Jay reflects on the inseparable bond between privilege and duty in the Christian life:

“As the love of God renders our duty our privilege, so the authority of God renders our privilege our duty. And is not this an advantage? For thus we are not left to the calls of self-love and our own interest, but are bound to pursue our welfare by the command of God, and the peril arising from a neglect of it.”

I read that line while sitting in a house that feels half empty, too quiet, lonely in a lot of moments and rather frantic in others. My wife is away for the long haul of post-transplant with our youngest daughter. The hospital has become their world for now. I am home with our other three girls, trying to keep routines intact, homeschooling in between phone calls, appointments, and toddler-counseling. I’m studying for sermons and lessons and leading worship. I’m managing piles of little shoes, mountains of laundry (though I have some help with those), and the emotional weight that my daughters feel but cannot articulate.

It’s easy to drift in seasons like this.

Drift into a kind of survival autopilot where the only things that get done are the things that demand immediate attention. The squeaky wheels, the urgent tasks, the non-negotiable deadlines. You wake up, scramble, push through, collapse, and repeat. And if there is a moment of quiet, you numb yourself rather than nourish yourself.

In times like these, the soul can quietly shrink.

But then Jay’s sentence struck me: God has commanded us to pursue our own welfare. Not the shallow welfare of ease or comfort, but the true welfare of trusting His Son.

Some seasons are more prone to be shaped by fear, exhaustion, and relentless responsibility. In those the duty of faith becomes a mercy.

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