Entries Tagged 'faith' ↓

If I could measure faith with a meter, it would drop to its lowest point when reflecting on God’s promises. Most divine promises are far reaching and limited by the curvature of time limits. Because I cannot see beyond the handwidth of my life God’s promises often challenges my faith.

I wonder if Abraham had any doubts or questions when God told him He would bless him and make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sands on the seashore? If I had been Abraham I would have had a few doubts with the few grains of sand I would have been allowed to hold. In my opinion it was a distant landscape of faith requiring an imagination for belief.

Like Abraham, we are promised much—but not one of us is granted more than a few grains to hold. Only by faith can we imagine the surf that we are promised will one day lap upon our shore.

It’s the complex thinker in me that excogitates the fragments of which a life is made of. Do fragments of my story and yours, in some mysterious way reflect the plan and the material of the whole? Are there fragments of necessity? Are parts of life thrown away, while other fragments from it transcend time because their fulfillment, though small, are important pieces in the divine work?

From our brief time on earth, it’s impossible for us to know which parts of our lives are fragments to be thrown away and which parts are fragments of necessity, reflecting a divine work that may be centuries in the making. It was just as difficult, I’m sure, for Abraham to know.

1. Why does the body of Christ follow rather than lead in social reform—and then dishonestly claim leadership in reforms after the fact?
   
2. Why do so many Christ-followers pilgrimage through life without ever considering the veracity of unbelief; never allowing it to challenge their faith?
   
3. Why does the church speak of absolute values without every pointing to the scriptural examples of situation ethics?
   

Maria Salzman believes one consequence of western culture’s weathering of one scandal after another is a culture full of cynicism. We’re much wiser to the ploys of politicos, preachers, and priest. And we’re anxious about what the future holds. Anxiety overload! And we respond by bouncing from—”It won’t get me”—to a cautious and fearful—”Can I beat the odds. Am I going to make it?”

Not only have our fears been amplified but our trust has eroded. We’ve lost faith in our institutions (government, corporations, the United Nations, and even church). All of which once helped us navigate the world’s woes. We’re at the cynical tail end of just over 200 years of ideologies spawned by the enlightenment.

Here are some of the things I have observed in response to our fears and anxiety. A desire for more personal control. I see that in home-schooling, the obsession of homegrown organic foods, and the screening of potential mates online for the perfect match. Personal control has become a social phenomenon.