Proficiency in Believing

Faith was then a task for a whole lifetime, because it was assumed that proficiency in believing is not acquired either in days or in weeks.
—Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

If I had more courage or discipline, perhaps it would be easier to feel I was becoming proficient in faith. For me it is as much of a struggle today as it ever was. My belief in progress and hard work tell me that it should be just like proficiency with a musical instrument or some other art form: the more you work at it, the better you get. But it’s not that way at all.

It may be that proficiency in believing comes not in working harder, but in working less; not in mastering something but being mastered by it. Because the more I think I’ve mastered belief, the more it slips through my fingers into the outstretched hands of children; children who have not worked at it but receive it easily because they know they need it and are certain they deserve it. Perhaps I should stop trying so hard and remember what it means to be like a child, remember that of all the things I was made for the most blessed one is surely learning to receive.

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