We ended Part 3 of our series, “The Virtue of Failure,” giving God space to create with our dear Adam, who’s a stand-in for all of us walking wounded, our dear Adam, whose drinking is a besetting sin—no one knows that better than he—but a sin he almost cannot afford to lose for fear that something deep would just overwhelm him.

This attention to the deeper and damaged realities of the human person is one reason why Christianity is not chiefly a moralistic faith. For what is the benefit of lessening or stopping an immoral behavior if it will either be replaced by another immoral behavior, or lead to the erupting of an internal volcano? Yes, immoral behaviors must stop, but sometimes we can approach the fruit by going up through the root. Sometimes our sickenesses lead the way to healing.

The process of salvation will involve moral living and moral choices, but interior renewal is the real goal. This is where the virtue of failure comes in. With an honest and unflinching look at what I’ve done to myself and an honest and unflinching faith in the love of God, I can finally begin some genuine soul work. This is how failure becomes a servant of the Lord Most High.

Failure reveals my pride. “Lord, be gentle in humbling me.” Failure reveals my desire to control outcomes. “Lord, help me rest in your will, not mine.” Failure reveals my addiction to the approval of others. “Lord, your opinion of me is all that matters.” Failure reveals how much I depend on results. “Lord, take this effort and use it for your purpose, your glory.” Failure reveals that I only know how to do, not how to simply be. “Lord, give me peace and stillness when I have nothing to fill my time.” Failure reveals that I am not God. “Lord, do in me what I cannot do within myself.”

True soul work addresses both the compulsive behavior and the fire causing it to spring into action. Again, people are different, and perhaps there is no lingering difficult emotion or compulsive behavior or internal fire that troubles your life, but in Adam’s case, what could happen if, through a redemptive attitude toward failure, he grew aware of this inner connection between behavior and cause? Could he summon the curiosity and the courage necessary to follow the firefighter to the fire it is working so hard to contain, a fire he may not yet even know exists? Can we summon courage for our own soul work, trampling upon the threat of fire in manly fashion, as we Orthodox sing in matins?

True soul work is unhurried, slow, mundane. This is all part of what it means to discover the truth about our inward parts. As the Psalmist says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Examine me and know my paths, and see if there are any lawless ways within me.” The call here is to grow not self-absorbed but self-aware. “Blessed is the man,” says St. Isaac the Syrian, “who knows his own weakness.” This is why the sacrament of confession is so glorious. It is not the moment the penitent is at his worst, but the moment he is turning toward his best, the way the prodigal son began the restoration of his relationship with his father before he arrived home.

This awareness of the realistic contours of the self is the kind of gift we want to pass on to our children. Our children do not need to see us perfect; they need to see us take our imperfections to Christ. When they are especially young, children often think they’re perfect, and why not? We surround them with affection, with attention; we meet their every need, laugh at their every gesture, scramble to soothe every hurt. We perform for their pleasure. But, like water finding the cracks in concrete, life will find its way toward their weaknesses, their deficits, and grind away at them until our children are devastated and hollowed out, like we are, and they will discover that they are not perfect. What they will do with their imperfections will be shaped in part by the example of what we do with ours.

What is the real tragedy of the garden of Eden? Yes, Adam and Eve were deceived by the serpent, closed their ears off to God, and fell into disobedience. That was indeed tragic, but a second tragedy affects the world just as much today as does that first bite of the fruit. After Adam and Eve had sinned, Genesis tells us that God was walking in the cool of the garden, looking for his children. By the way, isn’t that a glorious detail? God, far from arms folded and brow furrowed in disgust, went looking for his children after their rebellion.

And as God was looking for Adam and Eve, what were they doing? Hiding. The devil won twice, first by the fall, second by the hiding. We have inherited not only the tendency to fall into sin but also the tendency to hide from God when we do, avoiding church, avoiding confession, avoiding people, avoiding prayer, avoiding giving God the space to create us anew. The fall is made worse by the hiding.

When you and I encounter failure—personal failure, professional failure, relational failure—we face an important choice: What now? What now? To answer that, let’s visit with a revered icon, maybe in the most famous icon in all the Christian tradition, called the Hospitality of Abraham, also called the Holy Trinity, by the 15th-century iconographer and monk, Andrei Rublev. There is no action in the icon, and yet there is astonishing action. There is no motion, and yet we cannot help but feel drawn in toward the vibrant fellowship of the Three. The whole image is like a ceaseless, quivering invitation. The figures are arranged to form almost a circle. We say “almost” because the scene is awaiting a guest at the table. Each person who gazes upon the icon prayerfully will sense an invitation—“In the fear of God, with faith and love, draw near”—an invitation to personally enter the glory of holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal.

In the center of the table, we see a square, an image of a custom of our faith of embedding relics in every altar or holy table. However, that little square is also a symbol of reality. Christ said, “Small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life.” The icon accepts that the way to God is difficult and fraught with missteps by our fallen human nature, and yet that truth is a small part of the whole mosaic of hopefulness that we see in the icon, of what C.S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia called “further up and further in.” It’s a ceaseless invitation toward God that takes into consideration the reality of failure. It’s as if the message of the icon is: “Yes, you will fail—but keep coming, keep coming, keep coming.”

So we finish our reflection on the virtue of failure with this opening line from a poem by Louisa Fletcher.

I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
And never put on again.

The 21st chapter of the New Testament book of Revelation shows Christ seated on a glorious throne. History as we know it has come to an end. And to those who belong to him, the text says that

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away. And the One seated on the throne says: Behold, I make all things new.

But this passing away of the former things is not reserved just for the end of time. Instead, as the book of Lamentations promises, “His mercies are new every morning.” Because of that assurance—“His mercies are new every morning”—the former things that have passed away can mean those sins I have committed yesterday, that argument I should not have had, those thoughts I should not have entertained, that indulgence I should have avoided, that sloth I should have resisted, that tongue-lashing I should have restrained, that failure I thought was irredeemable.

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has come. This promise is not given to us just at our conversion or at our baptism. It is available to us every time we fail or fall down.

Our God is a God of a new morning, a new day, a new life. Beloved listeners, have you made a promise that you have broken? Begin again. Have you tried to do the right thing, only to sabotage yourself with the same old habits? Begin again. Have you tried to make a fresh start but have fallen short? Begin again. Have you tried to start a new habit with your children, only to fail to follow through? Begin again. Are you weary from investing in some important relationship? Begin again. Have you tried to forgive only to have the memories haunt you? Begin again. Have you reached out only to feel nothing in return? Begin again. Do you feel that your children are beyond your influence? Begin again.

Are you carrying the guilt of broken promises? Begin again. And if you fall—begin again. Have you tried to turn away from a bad habit or a bad path, only to turn onto it once more? Begin again. And if you fall—begin again. Are you haunted by a feeling that it is too late? Begin again. And if tomorrow you give in to that despair, rise up and begin again.

“Behold, his mercies are new every morning. Behold, I make all things new. Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Begin again, and if we fall, begin again. As one Western saint said, “We do not show how much we love God by never falling away. We show how much we love God by how quickly we return once we find ourselves fallen.”

Maybe like mine, your heart says, “I wish that there were some wonderful place called the land of Beginning Again, where all our mistakes and all our heartaches and all our poor selfish grief could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door, and never be put on again.” I wish that there were some wonderful place called the land of Beginning Again. There is, beloved. It is the Church.