Tea, Earl Grey, Hot

Captain Picard always seemed to be a man who confidently knew what he wanted. He approached life in the same way he ordered tea on the U.S.S. Enterprise, straightforward and to the point.

In real life, Patrick Stewart wasn’t quite so certain of himself, especially as a younger man. He loved the theater and acting from an early age but honestly struggled to see it as a professional career. At the age of sixteen, while working for a newspaper and continuing his acting as a hobby, his editor finally came to him with the ultimatum, you must choose journalism or acting. Everything changed in that moment. As we now know well, Stewart chose acting.

Playing a character on a show differs greatly from making important, life-altering decisions. Life isn’t scripted. We don’t know what’s coming in the next episode. Our choices all require us to take a risk—to have faith. In an NPR interview, Stewart once said his commitment to acting came long before he had any confidence he would succeed in making it a career. I actually love that so much. This is how God wants us to approach walking with him. Our commitment, our faith, our belief in him keeps us moving forward. We pray, we ask, and we risk confidently because everything is in God’s hands, not our own.

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Patient endurance is what we need now. That’s actually a really good definition of what faith often looks like. We risk and we wait. Waiting looks like walking, one step at a time, enduring whatever comes our way. Leaps of faith will have their place, too, along the way, but it’s here in the persistent pursuit that we find confidence, contentment, and joy.

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