Faith seldom shows up wrapped in sweetness or ease.
Faith emerges from life twisted, out of balance, torn and scarred.
Faith turns out to grow stronger in darkness. Disappointment, loss, and defeat fertilize the budding sprouts pushing out blooms of hope and fruitfulness at just the right moment, when the future appears impossible.
Faith calls forth smirking laughter, even from supposed friends.
Faith takes it.
Faith endures no matter what the cutting, heartbreaking disappointment.
Faith expects to be rejected.
Faith prompts tears in battle and, at times, pure agony in the face of lonely abandonment and judgment often by friends.
Faith acts out of deep reservoirs of patient love.
Faith knows what others cannot know or see or imagine.
Faith challenges rules, legalism and law. Faith transcends safe, ordinary, lifeless constructs designed and passed along to ensure social control. Faith refuses to be hedged, blocked or deterred. Faith refuses to be defined by what's possible, normal or acceptable.
Faith finds comfort in truth, wherever truth can be discovered, no matter how unexpected or unorthodox the location.
Faith knows fear right well, but never embraces it or asks it to dance.
Faith enjoys beauty. Faith creates beauty. Faith supports the discovery of beauty, not matter what limits must be overcome, stuck down or simply ignored.
Faith roots itself in a community.
Faith goes beyond the moment.
It outdistances any individual concern.
Faith arises from the center space of life, a place not all reach. Once on it's feet, faith races to the margins to do it's work, performing miracles as if ordinary events of daily life.
Nothing replaces faith.
Faith joins, invites, remains, provokes, loves...forever. . . no matter what.
4 comments:
How lovely put and thought provoking, Larry. Is this by your own pen or another's? And if yours, may I reproduce it, giving you all due credit, of course?
Yes, I wrote this over the weekend. Feel free to use it. Thanks!
Very good thoughts. So many use faith as a limitation. A fence. Or even a wall. This is what you must believe and nothing else. But true faith is always searching, changing, challenging, expecting more. The first view sees faith as a destination. The second as a journey.
Reminds me in some ways of this:
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”
- Reinhold Niebuhr
When I read it this morning I was anticipating a credit at the end. Wow, you have such a talent with the written word. I think a good number of people will be referring back to this post.
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