The Glory in the Staying

I’m still hanging out in this space of staying as sacramental living. (if you missed the first post on this, you can read it HERE)

I’m not entirely sure why, or what God intends for me to take away from it. Maybe it is simply a truth I need to keep in front of me right now: deep faith is not always loud faith. It is not always a mind-blowing revelation, a dramatic breakthrough, or one of those miraculous moments that seem to arrive out of nowhere and tie everything up neatly. Sometimes faith grows in quieter places than that. It grows in the ache. It grows in the unanswered prayer. It grows in the place where suffering and love have both taken up residence, and neither one seems in a hurry to leave.

Sometimes faith becomes part of our veins because it has learned to flow with the brokenness and the blood. Sometimes it is formed by staying with the broken mirror long enough to see light refracted off the scattered shards. Not despite the brokenness, but somehow through it. Not because the pain is beautiful, but because the presence of God still is, no matter the circumstances.

There are seasons when faith does not look loud or triumphant. It doesn’t look like immediate answers, visible victory, or even emotional clarity (our emotions usually don’t get the ‘clarity is kindness memo until further down the road!). Sometimes it looks like staying. Staying near Jesus in grief. Staying near Him in costly devotion. Staying when leading has placed you on the target, and the arrows are flying from all directions. Staying when others misunderstand, scatter, or walk away.

And Scripture tells us that these quiet acts of remaining are not small. Sometimes the glory of God shines most clearly not in spectacle, but in the quiet faithfulness of those who stay near Him.

That matters because I think many of us carry around a quiet assumption that if we really know Jesus and love Him, then the hardest things will somehow not happen to us. Or if they do happen, they won’t last as long or cut as deeply because we have Him. We know better, at least on paper. Most of us could articulate a theology of suffering if asked. And yet when sorrow barges through our own front door, when the diagnosis lands, when the relationship breaks, when the prayer goes unanswered, when the church wounds instead of comforts, even seasoned faith can get tripped up by grief.

We are still surprised by pain. We are still tempted to think that proximity to Jesus should somehow exempt us from the deepest wounds.

But Scripture will not let us hold onto that illusion for long.

Mary was Jesus’ mother, and she was not spared the pain.

John writes, “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing there, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (John 19:25–27).

Standing by the cross.

It is such a simple phrase, and yet it holds so much.

Mary stayed when others left. Of course she did. That was her son on that cross. Her baby. The child she had carried, raised, watched, wondered over, and loved. Even though she had known since before His birth that His life would carry a sword through her own soul too, knowing a thing is coming and standing inside it are not the same thing. Prophecy is one thing. Watching your child die is another.

I can’t read that scene without feeling the ache of it. I can’t help but wonder whether Mary felt that frantic and helpless feeling so many of us know in the face of suffering—the desperate inner scramble that says if I pray harder, sing louder, beg more, maybe somehow this can still be stopped. Even when the inevitable is already pressing in. Even when some part of you knows where this story is going. I remember that feeling when PJ was actively dying, the strange and terrible collision of knowing and not wanting to know, of surrendering and pleading, somehow living in the same body. I wonder if Mary knew that feeling, too, as she sat in the dirt at the foot of the cross.

Her staying didn’t remove the suffering. It didn’t change the outcome. It didn’t spare her the agony of watching love suffer in front of her.

And yet she stayed.

Where else was she going to go?

And because she stayed, the act itself became witness.

There at the foot of the cross, in the place that held both horror and holy revelation, Mary’s act of staying tells the truth that many of us need to remember: glory and grief can exist side by side. The cross is not an interruption of God’s glory. It is one of the deepest revelations of it. And Mary remained close enough to see that glory through her tears, even when she could not yet understand all that God was doing.

Sometimes that is what faith looks like.

Not understanding. Not fixing. Not triumphing.

Standing by the cross.

There is another woman in Scripture who shows us a different kind of staying.

In Mark 14, Jesus is in Bethany at Simon the leper's house. He is reclining at the table when a woman comes in with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume. Mark tells us it was “pure nard,1’ worth more than three hundred denarii—an extravagant amount. She breaks the jar and pours it on His head.

And immediately the room does what rooms like that so often do.

It calculates. It critiques. It judges.

“Why has this perfume been wasted?” they ask. It could have been sold. The money could have gone elsewhere. There are more efficient, more impressive, more publicly defensible uses for something that valuable. And then Mark adds a painful detail: “They began to scold her.”

I am always struck by that. She comes near Jesus in costly devotion, and the response of those around her is indignation.

But Jesus sees her differently.

“Leave her alone,” He says. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a noble thing for me… She has done what she could; she has anointed my body in advance for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her” (Mark 14:6, 8–9).

She stayed near Jesus with a kind of love that was completely unguarded, fully embodied, and unashamedly costly. She did not manage the moment. She did not make it tidy. She did not offer the kind of devotion that could be explained away as practical or efficient. She simply came close and gave what she had.

And the room called it waste.

There is something about faithful staying that will often look foolish to people committed to calculation. The world doesn’t always know what to do with extravagant love. It doesn’t know what to do with devotion that is unconcerned with optics. It doesn’t know what to do with someone who remains near Jesus in ways that cost something and don’t immediately produce measurable results.

But Jesus does…and He calls it beautiful.

That matters to me, because sometimes staying with Jesus in a hurting world does look wasteful. Staying in prayer when no answer seems to come. Staying tender when cynicism would be easier. Staying open to God when suffering has made your heart want to close in on itself. Staying present at the table when our appetite seems like it has been lost. Staying in worship when the notes are sour and your instrument is out of tune. Staying in love when loss tries to scare you away.

There are forms of devotion that won’t make sense to everyone around us. But perhaps part of the glory of God is revealed in precisely that kind of misunderstood faithfulness.

Sometimes staying is not certainty. Sometimes it is not emotional resolve. Sometimes it is not even confidence in your own faith. Sometimes it is simply the recognition that even in confusion, even in disappointment, even in the tension of not understanding, Jesus is still Jesus.

And where else are we going to go? That question matters because most of us will face moments when leaving seems easier.

Not only leaving prayer, though sometimes that too. Not only leaving the practices that have held us, though sorrow can make those feel thin for a while. I also mean leaving relationally, spiritually, ecclesially. Pulling away from Jesus because His people have hurt us. Pulling away from the Church because someone said the dumb, careless, or devastating thing right in the middle of our suffering (I could write a book about the dumb things people have said…). Pulling away because disillusionment makes cynicism feel safer than hope.

And to be clear, not all staying is holy.

Some leaving is obedience.

Leaving abuse is not unfaithfulness. Leaving manipulation is not weakness. Leaving systems that demand self-erasure or excuse harm is not a failure to stay with God. Sometimes the holiest thing a person can do is leave what is destructive.

But there is also a different kind of leaving; the kind that pain tempts us toward when what we really want is distance from disappointment. The kind where the wounds inflicted by people begin to harden into suspicion toward God Himself. The kind where we let human failure have the last word over our life with Jesus.

That is where this invitation to stay becomes so tender and at the same time, so hard.

To stay with God in suffering.
To stay with Jesus when prayer feels thin.
To stay open to the Spirit when grief has made everything feel heavy.
To stay near Christ even when the Church has not reflected Him well.
To stay not because everything is okay, but because He is still holy, still good, still the One with the words of eternal life.

Sometimes faithful staying looks like coming back to prayer with nothing polished to say. Sometimes it looks like sitting in church with a broken heart and singing only half the words because the other half catch in your throat. Sometimes it looks like refusing to numb yourself out of the ache before God has had time to meet you there. Sometimes it looks like remaining near Jesus in love even when the people around you are calculating, judging, or misunderstanding your devotion.

That kind of staying is not dramatic. Most of the time, it is painfully ordinary. But perhaps that is exactly why it becomes witness. Because it says to the world, and maybe also to our own souls: Jesus is still worth staying near.

Not because the suffering is small.
Not because the people are always safe.
Not because the path is easy.
But because He does not leave.

Maybe that is part of what it means to bear witness in a hurting world.

Mary standing by the cross. A woman pouring out what others call waste.

They don’t look triumphant in the usual sense. And yet they bear witness to something beautiful.

Sometimes the glory of God shines not in noise or spectacle, but in the steady beauty of those who stay near Jesus when it would be easier not to. Sometimes His glory is revealed in the quiet loyalty of a life that keeps returning, keeps loving, keeps remaining. Sometimes staying itself becomes its own kind of testimony: ordinary, costly, and full of grace.

And maybe that is where some of us are right now.

Not in a season of loud faith. Not in a season of visible victory. Not in a season of quick answers.

But in a season of staying.

If so, take heart.

Your staying may not feel impressive. It may not even feel strong. It may feel shaky, tear-streaked, quiet, and unresolved. But do not mistake quiet for insignificant. Do not mistake hidden for holy-less. It may be that in your remaining, the glory of God is being made visible in ways you cannot yet see. Sometimes the glory of God shines most clearly not in spectacle, but in the quiet faithfulness of those who stay near Jesus.

And that kind of glory is not small at all.

Photo by FRANCESCO TOMMASINI on Unsplash