Sermon “Nugget”:
On Keeping the Faith - Some Thoughts after the Tsunami
Lift up your eyes, have faith, says the prophet. It is not an easy thing to do today as we are assaulted by waves of images of destruction and despair.
In The Letter to the Hebrews, faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This is an important definition, since it seems to me that many people see faith as “having arrived,” so to speak. Many people see faith as being able to have all the answers. Many people believe that if only they had enough faith, then life would be clear, decisions would be easy to make. It would mean that troubles would disappear.
And yet, that is not the way the Bible defines faith. Faith is that ambiguous state of being in which we have assurance of things that we have not seen yet. It therefore, implies a very strong relationship of trust. It means that we trust God even though we do not have all the answers. We do not have it made; we have not yet arrived and we are in the midst of trouble. We lift up our eyes though we would rather not, especially now.
The New Year always calls us to dare to dream of something new, to lift our eyes and imagine a hopeful future. We need to understand our faith in that way, especially at this moment when the signs of destruction and inconceivable devastation are all around us. Our hearts are breaking and the tragic stories that come out cause us to weep and wonder - “how could this happen?”
God did not cause this to happen, this is not God’s will. The power of God is not the power of death and destruction. But make no mistake, the power of God is here. It is the power of God that allows us - challenges us - to lift up our eyes, and as Paul says, to look with the eyes of our heart, the eyes of faith, and to see the presence of the God of life, love and hope as present in the midst of misery. It is the power that will help us sustain our fragile and faltering faith even now.
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