As a parish we are going through the book Start Here by Don Williams.  While there are several things in the book I strongly disagree with I chose it because there are other things I think the author gets right on.  This quote is one of those things:

It seems that so often the spiritual life is filled with 'fits and starts.' We feel one day or one week we are on fire and walking closely with God and the next week or day or even later the same day we feel as though it was simply a fluke or a fad that has passed (maybe I'm just being autobiographical and hoping I'm not alone in this ;^). Anyway, this week I came across this passage in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. It is a word of encouragement to all of us as we struggle along the path of following Christ:

"A brother said to Poemen, 'If I give my brother something, for instance a piece
of bread, the demons made the gift worthless by making me think it was done to
please men.' The hermit said to him, 'Even if it is done to please men, we
still ought to give our brothers what they need.' Then he told him this
parable: 'In a town there were two farmers. One of them sowed seed, and
gathered a poor harvest; the other was idle and did not sow, and had no harvest
to gather. If famine came which of them would survive?' The brother
answered, 'The one who sowed seed even if the harvest was poor.' He said,
'It is the same for us. We sow a few seeds, and they are poor, but in the
time of famine we shall not die.'"