About a week ago, a friend suggested something of the following: if faith is "the assurance of things hoped for," than the goal in our spiritual journey is not stability. It has been rolling around in my head and kept me thinking: Our goal in faith is the ever-changing dynamic of seeking God's call daily, and celebrating this change in our lives and the lives of those around us. To grow and live is to be challenged and change. Stability is stagnation, change is growth.
If we look over the past year with thankfulness that life has been easy, stable, and simple -- have we lived? Or, can we look over the past year, and see how life has dragged us along, fundamentally changed us, ripped us out of our complacency and the commonplace and pulled us into new relationships, new challenges, a new self-awareness, and new tomorrow? We sometimes saw these as 'difficult times.' Some of these times have been the worst days of this past year; not something we would list in our 'thanksgiving list.'
And yet – these are frequently the times when God is able to most fundamentally change who we are. Not that God has caused these difficult times, but our God is one of redemption. God reaches into the very pliable pulp of our lives and creates masterpieces where we just see and feel like broken pieces. Redemption is God's response to the discouragement, shattered dreams, disappointment, and disaster. Accepting defeat and destruction actually leave us in a stagnation of unfulfillment and disenchantment. Accepting Redemption is offering to God our greatest frustrations, brokenness, and fear - - with the hope that He can use it to bring us to a new Creation.
The passage from Hebrews above, in the Century English Bible is as follows: "Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don't see," (Hebrews 11:1).
Sometimes we see this passage, and imagine 'what we hoped for,' as our dreams and the possibilities that we can construct in our minds for how tomorrow can be a better day. But, if faith is also 'proof of what we don't see,' then there is a sense that even our dreams and constructs of tomorrow are not enough. Faith is the hope in a tomorrow that only God can see. It is the end result of what God can do with everything that makes us who we are.
Our faith, is in God's redemption, and the tomorrow that is not just better than today, but a different tomorrow than where we now go.
Watching the Water,
Dan
Thanks for your thoughts, Dan. This is very helpful to me now as I am still getting past several years where "life has dragged us along, fundamentally changed us, ripped us out of our complacency and the commonplace". I know I can't go ever go back to the way things were. But I'm still looking for "new relationships, new challenges, a new self-awareness, and new tomorrow".
ReplyDeleteSo now I am in the process of God's redemption, eh? I know that's a good place! I'll wait for it.
Love you, Mom