Cumulative Impact

Those familiar with the Leave No Trace (LNT) principles will know that the phrase 'cumulative impact' is frequently used to describe the effect of outdoor enthusiasts on the environments in which we play.  One hiker sidestepping a muddy patch of trail won't do much damage; but a hundred hikers sidestepping the same muddy patch will widen the trail substantially.  On the other side, one person choosing to clean up Snickers wrappers and microtrash from a campsite won't have much effect on the entire mountain range; but a hundred hikers consciously picking up after themselves (and others) will leave a much larger area in better condition.  One decision might not effect noticeable change, but the cumulative impact of decisions effects significant change.  

The same philosophy is true in one's walk with the Lord.  I cannot simply pray once and expect a deep relationship with my heavenly Father.  That relationship, like all relationships, must be intentionally cultivated.  Soren Kierkegaard notes in Fear and Trembling that his generation is losing sight of the richness of a deep faith:

 "In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further.  It would perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but is is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith, for otherwise it would be queer for them to be...going further.  In those old days it was different, then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that dexterity in faith is not acquired in a few days or weeks."

 If this was true for Kierkegaard's generation, how much more so for our generation!  I will not assume to speak for others, but I know that I have absolutely lost sight of what it means to live in a quiet daily relationship with my God.  I often find myself wanting a deeper, more intimate, more fulfilling relationship with God...but I find other pursuits to distract myself and tell myself that I'm just refusing to settle for a quiet, inconsequential faith.  I tell myself that when the timing is right, when I read the right theologians, when I can subdue my own heart, that some ambiguous day in the future I will finally "get it" and intimacy with God will happen.  I expect immediate gratification, immediate intimacy with One to whom I won't even give 5 minutes each day.  My proud heart is not content to seek the Lord in something so antiquated as daily time with Him.  

"When the tried oldster drew near to his last hour, having fought the good fight and kept the faith, his heart was still young enough not to have forgotten that fear and trembling which chastened the youth, which the man indeed held in check, but which no man quite outgrows...except as he might succeed at the earliest opportunity in going further.  Where these revered figures arrived, that is the point where everybody in our day begins to go further."

 I pray that I learn the discipline of a quiet faith.  I pray that I learn to live in the hope of intimacy.  I pray that I learn to curb my tendencies to want "go further" and instead learn that faith is a task for a whole lifetime.  I pray, hope, and know that the cumulative impact of a quiet faith is a powerful intimacy with the Lord.