By faith we serve, write, pray, with no idea what the results — if any — might be | Opinion

The thing about epiphanies is that by definition they catch you unawares. They arrive at times and in places you weren’t expecting.

I had one the other day in a used-book store. Cursorily scanning a shelf in the religion section, I was surprised to see a familiar light-blue cover. It was my parents’ little book, “We Believe in Miracles.”

I pulled it off the shelf and thumbed through it. Every page called up a memory.

My parents devoted their whole adult lives to the ministry. Dad was the preacher, but Mom supported him in every way possible — teaching Sunday school, providing encouragement when things weren’t going well, working a secular job to help keep the family afloat. She was a full partner in anything he accomplished.

Theirs was an unusual and in some ways even spectacular spiritual journey — two people who really acted as one flesh for 50 years. They weren’t stars. They tended modest-sized, mostly rural congregations. They were journeymen.

But man, they saw a lifetime of miracles. Small miracles. Grand miracles. Healings. Last-minute financial provisions. You name it.

In their 60s, they co-wrote a book about the marvelous things they’d seen God do.

They self-published “We Believe in Miracles” in 1995. I helped them edit the manuscript. My sister designed the cover. It was literally a table-top, mom-and-pop operation.

They had no money for promotion. Knowing my dad, I imagine he gave away more copies out of the trunk of his car than they sold.

But as I stood in that bookstore the other day, I remembered the process of putting it together and the stories within its covers. I know the events Dad and Mom recounted were true—I’d been an eyewitness to most of them.

But none of that was the epiphany. Here’s the epiphany:

Theirs was a humble book in both appearance and tone, yet it was still out there making the rounds. Sure, it was just one copy in a used-book store. But it was there, that day, waiting to be rediscovered. My mom passed away 20 years ago, and my father followed in 2012.

I thought of a line about Abel from the book of Hebrews: “and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks.”

I considered how acts of creativity, or for that matter of good will or love, are largely acts of faith.

My wife Liz is a writer. She’s published several academic books that teach schoolteachers how to teach writing. But she also writes fiction and poetry and currently is working on a screenplay. She writes in a secular vein, mainly.

As long as I’ve known her, she’s said the real power of writing is simply in the doing of it. It’s about the journey. When you’re done with a piece you’ve written, it may get published or it may not. If it is published, it may be a hit or a failure. But you’ve succeeded, because you did it.

Results are out of your hands, Liz says. You release the results to the cosmos. They will be what they will be. Your duty is to be faithful to the calling.

The mystics and monks say much the same, about all manner of worthwhile efforts.

Thomas Merton — mystic, monk, peacemaker — said something to the effect that if you’re going to pursue social justice in a hostile society, you’ve got to stay grounded in an inner peace that’s not dependent on the outcomes.

You shouldn’t give much thought to how it’s going to turn out, he said, because all your work may well go down in flames. The value is in the doing. You struggle for, say, civil rights even if those in power respond by doubling down on their cruelty.

To me, you similarly pray for the sick even if they don’t improve. You teach your children the virtues you want them to adopt even if they’re mocking you to your face. You show kindness to a coworker who’s a bitter jerk even if he only gets surlier.

But there’s another dimension, too. The meaning is in the doing, yes. Yet it helps to have faith that your efforts will eventually bear some success, even if the results aren’t all you’d hoped for, even if they’re as subtle as a tuft of grass vibrating in a gentle breeze.

It helps to believe, or try to believe, there’s a greater force permeating all this. A small but worthy work brought to completion — a poem written, a prayer raised, a mercy given — may in its own tiny, invisible way continue to ripple through the ether, altering the cosmos long after you’re forgotten.

In the bookstore the other day, my first thought was to buy my parents’ book. But I have multiple copies at home and one more would do me no good.

Instead, I slid it back onto the shelf where I’d found it, and breathed a request that some other pilgrim in a state of need might stumble upon it there. That my mom and dad, having done their work and gone to their rewards, might continue to speak.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.