He Leadeth Me

There’s a powerful moment in the movie, The Count of Monte Cristo.

In the dark dungeon of Château d’If, Edmond Dantès is trying to escape with an old priest who has been imprisoned for many years. While trying to escape, tragedy occurs, and the priest is crushed in the tunnel they are trying to escape out of. In the final exchange of their words, and while the priest tries to explain where a hidden insurmountable buried treasure hides, he tells him to only use the wealth for good, as God says, “Vengeance is mine.” You could see in Dantès eyes… but how? How could I not, that very vengeance, has motivated me to get out of this terrible place. So Dantes coldly replies, “I don’t believe in God.”

The old priest, about to die, broken, imprisoned for most of his life in a dungeon, simply responds, “It doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”

What a beautiful example of faith. 

It’s a beautiful line during an intense scene of escape.

Now, in our faith, it actually does matter whether we believe in God. Faith matters deeply. But the faithful priest knows that very well, what he was trying to say in that moment is something profoundly true: long before we reach for God, God is already reaching for us.

Even when we doubt.

Even when we feel abandoned.

Even when we’re not sure what we believe.

God is already there, extending His hand.

In a sense, the whole Christian life begins with that moment, when we realize that God has been calling us all along, inviting us to step out of the darkness and into the light.

And the invitation is simple:

Come and see.

There was a Jesuit priest who lived this reality in an extraordinary way. His name was Walter Ciszek. He lived nearly 23 years in a Soviet Prison Camp from 1941 to 1963

Father Ciszek secretly entered the Soviet Union during the height of World War II as a missionary priest, with grand plans to teach those under Communist rule about Christ. Eventually he was arrested by Soviet authorities, accused of being a spy, and thrown into prison. He endured brutal interrogations, solitary confinement, and years in labor camps in Siberia. For a long time he struggled interiorly. Everything he had planned for his life and ministry had collapsed. The mission he imagined had failed. The future he hoped for was gone. He would sit in a cold, dark prison cell and wrestle with his faith.

But in that darkness, Father Ciszek came to a profound realization. God had not stopped leading him. Years later he wrote about that moment in his book He Leadeth Me:

“God was asking me to accept this situation as coming from His hands and to trust Him completely.”

That was the turning point. Nothing about his circumstances suddenly improved. He was still in prison. Still under guard. Still uncertain about the future. But something inside him changed.

He stopped trying to control everything and instead surrendered himself completely to God’s will. From that moment forward he understood something that unwavering faith requires us to believe:

God is not only leading us when life is easy. God is leading us even when life makes no sense. And that is what Father Ciszek discovered in the most unlikely place imaginable; a Soviet prison camp.

The title of his book says it all:

He Leadeth Me.

Not only when the path is clear.

Not only when the outcome is good.

But even in the darkness.

Which means you are not in control and when you accept that, we move closer to the one that is.

When he looked back on those years, he did not describe them as wasted.

Instead, he saw them as the place where he finally learned to trust God completely.

He sites in his book that he realized that faith is not simply believing in God when life goes the way we expect. Faith is trusting God when the path is confusing, when the future is uncertain, and when the plan we imagined falls apart.

Unwavering faith begins the moment we stop demanding that God follow our plan and instead trust that He is leading us according to His.

Because the truth is this:

God is leading every one of us.

The real question is whether we trust Him enough to follow.

Walter would go on to say;

“The will of God is not something you add to your life. It is a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God… or you surrender to the principles which governs the rest of the world.”

That realization changed everything for him.

Faith was no longer simply believing certain truths about God.

Faith became a decision.

A decision to trust.

A decision to surrender.

A decision to follow wherever God leads.

And that decision is at the heart of what it means to live with unwavering faith. Before we can progress in our prayer life, before we can lead others, we must first wrestle with our faith.

The Choice like so many in the grand story before us…. is now ours