This morning’s reflection in advance of my trip to Guatemala is about faith. It suggests that getting out of your normal, familiar routine forces you to renew and recommit to a reliance on God. You don’t have the comfort of familiar and predictable places and people and habits, which can lull us in a false sense of self-reliance. We forget who’s really making our world ordered, and think it’s us.
Hebrews 11 is a recounting of many of the people throughout the arc of salvation who lived and died by faith. Moses, Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Joseph, Rahab. Some of the people mentioned in the over twenty sentences that begin with ‘By faith’ were delivered from their troubles, while others were mocked, flogged, sawn in two, destitute and persecuted. And yet they had faith. The author of Hebrews is not painting a rosy or falsely optimistic picture of the guarantees from faith; the author doesn’t say that faith will right all wrongs. The chapter concludes that while all those commended for their faith may not have received their perceived promise, God provided something better.
As a member of a short-term mission trip, I will be out of my element. Routines and expected comforts will be stripped away. I will be forced to once again remember who provides, and on whom I am reliant.
And given my home world for the past 12 months, I have been out of my element. Routines and expected comforts have been stripped away. And I am acutely aware of the God on whom I am utterly dependent. In the past week, the concept of faith has come up twice in my world, so it’s fitting that this morning’s reflection is about faith.
I have returned to having a spiritual director. She helps me, by talking about my world, my sick loved one, where God is, and where God is moving and acting in my life. She asked me where God is, as I deal with the debilitating and cruel disease of schizophrenia. I fully believe God is sitting right with me, and my loved one. We talked about Jesus’ healing promises, and I recounted that healing by Jesus, while it could look like a miraculous cure for my loved one, more likely will look like increased peace for me. She said that it sounds like I’m looking at the whole arc of God’s grace and love, not necessarily today’s toils. I liked that image, of the whole story or arc. It’s way more long-term than many think of healing and grace and love.
She asked why I felt so much conviction that God was present. I was stumped. Because I do. Because I feel it. Because Scripture promises it. My answers were all about me: what I believe, and feel and sense. She smiled and said that Scripture also says faith is a gift from God. Oh, right. It’s not about me. There’s nothing I did to have faith. God has granted me the immeasurable gift of faith. Alleluia.
Later in the week, I heard from old family friends who we hadn’t talked to in over a year. In an email, they sent greetings, and explained they’d been thinking of us, because of shared experiences when we lived in Seattle. The last time we’d spoken, our loved one was not sick and not living with us. I shared this, feeling a little bad, because it’s a lot to digest in a brief email. But she responded beautifully. She felt bad for our loved one and for us. And then she wrote that her first thought when reading of our news was that this is what faith looks like. I wept.
I am not suggesting that I’ve succeeded with faith. But I am coming to understand that faith is a gift; it’s not mine to succeed at. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and it’s nothing my logical self would come to on my own.
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