Middle Miles

The rain outside made the afternoon feel later than it was as I worked my way through square #90. It was nothing special, apart from the fact that it marked the halfway point in this project. The middle is about the hardest place to be: it’s far enough along from the start that one has lost the initial excitement and enthusiasm, but still equally far enough from the end that no light at the end of the tunnel has appeared yet.

I remembered my first summer working at camp while I crocheted. On the course of an exhausting nine week summer, week five, six, and seven were at times unendurable. Our program director spurred the staff on, preaching perseverance through the middle miles. Every week he read us this verse:

Jude 1:24-25 “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy – to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.”

Though we persevere, it’s God who keeps us from falling in the weariness, discouragement, and doubt of the middle miles. How must Jesus have felt on day twenty while he was fasting in the desert - or the Israelites, twenty years into their desert wanderings - or Noah, after twenty days of rain and confinement with the world’s species on a boat?

It’s the hope of the outcome that motivates my perseverance. I keep crocheting because I want to have a finished afghan, and I keep praying because I have hope in the glory of my savior. The middle miles don’t have to be wasted miles, and with persistence, they won’t be. It’s all those miles that ultimately create an afghan and bring a “well done, good and faithful servant.”