Skip to main content

Now faith is...


Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark. (Rabindranath Tagore)

The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd. By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see. (Hebrews 11:1-3)

For some, the days may seem like they are a little 'dark' - nothing good seems to be in visible sight at all. For others, they have just come out of their darkest place to date, glad to be 'done with it', but ever so grateful for all they learned as they leaned into Jesus throughout that darkness. Faith isn't born in the 'lightest' places of our lives - it is most frequently found growing leaps and bounds when the 'darkness' comes into our lives. Why do you think that might be? It could just be that there is no other 'resource' quite as good as Jesus and his intense love for us. Trust in God is built - it isn't just 'given'. It isn't inherited from our parents or a good mentor in our lives. It isn't a result of reading our Bible from cover to cover as we would a novel. While the teachings of our parents and mentors may help us see faith in action, it doesn't 'create' faith within us - it just spurs us to look for that same faith by going to Jesus to understand for ourselves how it is faith is born and grows. Reading our Bible may give us an understanding of how God works, but just understanding how he works doesn't build our faith.

I like how Tagore put it - faith is 'feeling the light when the dawn is still dark'. When you at that darkest place, does light seem to trickle through that deepest darkness? Fear seems to be put down, we rise to our feet in some unknown faith, and we stand with a strength not our own. How? God comes alongside us in that darkness, allowing us to 'feel' his light long before we see it. While God doesn't want us to depend upon our feelings (emotions), he made our emotions to help us 'sense' things around us - including his presence, power, and peace. This might be the greatest thing we learn in the time of darkness - nothing replaces his presence, power, or peace - shadows may come and forces may be at work to replace them in our lives, but they will never be overcome by any opposing force. Darkness actually isn't darkness when we have the light within us. Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,