Hope deferred & 'acadie'

By Rob Des Cotes

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. - Proverbs 13:1

The experience of prayer can sometimes be discouraging, even for those who are quite disciplined at it. We wrestle time out of our busy day to finally show up for that long-promised appointment with God.

We offer ourselves to the Lord, and then we spend the next 20 minutes or so in an endless variety of thoughts that we could just as easily have had while driving or doing the dishes. We come to the discouraging conclusion that not only do we not know how to pray, but neither have we the will nor motivation to lead ourselves to the place of learning. Prayer seems impossible and we feel like giving up rather than subjecting ourselves to any further discouragement.

Though such an experience always appears as a failure, it is also a very normal and predictable stage towards a deeper and more truthful relationship with God. The inability to pray as we would want to is a common experience, but there is a tendency to see this failure as conclusive, and we need to be careful to avoid this misinterpretation. The ancients referred to this despairing tendency as acadie, the temptation to assess your spiritual progress negatively and then to give up. Acadie, or the 'noon-day devil' as it's sometimes called, is a spirit of discouragement that afflicts the soul by sapping it of its strength to persevere. Our hopes for prayer are disappointed and our heart is sickened, resulting in spiritual languor. The very thought of God becomes a burden to us. Spiritual languor is a disease of the soul that mostly affects the will. It weakens our attempts to pray, and quenches our hope of persevering inthe spiritual life. The desire to pray may still be present but the power and will to do so seem absent. In the end, even the desire to pray fades.

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Proverbs 13:12 recognizes that when we lose hope... we feel ill.

But, curiously enough, this fact is also the surest evidence that all is not without hope. The very reason that the heart is sickened is that it recognizes the terrible loss that languor represents. And it grieves this loss.

The discomfort we feel in this state is proof enough of the Holy Spirit's presence and continuing activity in the soul's desire for prayer. As St. John of the Cross observed,It is clear that this darkness does not come from luke warmness because the very nature of luke warmness is that it does not care, nor is concerned with the things of God. In the ebb and flow of our spiritual lives, it is important to recognize how the Holy Spirit uses seasons of languor in order to help strengthen and purify our desire for God. We should not measure our spiritual life only according to times of light, warmth, joy and fruitful activity.

Times of impasse, of coldness towards God, of darkness and grief at the apparent loss of contact with the Lord are also active forces in our spiritual formation. In times of spiritual languor it is important that we avoid thetemptation to jump to hasty conclusions especially if they're based solely on our own interpretation of the experience. Faith and patience, even in the midst of apparent failure, are always our best and mostfruitful recourses.

Rob Des Cotes is a spiritual director and pastor of Fairview Baptist Church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He teaches Contemplative Traditions at Trinity Western University, as well as courses on spirituality and the arts at Carey Theological College and Columbia Bible College. Rob also directs Imago Dei (www.imagodeicommunity.ca) a network of faith communities that encourages the practice of prayer and a transforming relationship with God. Rob is a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.comTo obtain 'Higher than I' go to: www.clementspublishing.com

April 10/2008