Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
The Hebrews passage is a listing of a life long journey of faith. If we look at the story of Abraham it will bring us a clue of the journey we all make. There are hills and valleys, places where we become lost, times when we are angry with God, and times we are satisfied to just trust.
First Abram, as he was known back then, was told to leave his family, his hometown, and wander. He never had a place of his own where he settled. He just moved from place to place. At every stop there were encounters. Encounters with God, encounters with strangers, encounters with sons, and encounters with the Creator of all. Think of leaving everything you have known and starting fresh in a number of places. Trusting God to provide for you and eventually your family. There is no known destination except you will know it when you come to it. What would it take to make this journey? How would this influence your faith?
Sometimes when hard times come we forget we are on the journey of faith. We think we are in foreign and unfamiliar lands. We think we can go back to the way things were. Yet this is our place of faith to find the places where we might have been provided for, where God may have been present. We are are allowed to get mad and frustrated, or sad and lonely and try to manipulate where we are headed. This is all a part of the journey. Because it helps us build up a tool box of things we can use the next time we come to the valley of despair or the mountains of challenge.
Sometimes we think the journey should be void of all obstacles. We think because we believe or have faith everything should be easy and gentle. All should be provided for and everything run smoothly. Yet this is not the journey. Think of the obstacles Abram encountered. Fear of earthly powers killing him and he presented his wife as his sister. Doubt that the promise of numerous descendants would never be granted so he used his wife's slave to have a son. Despair in seeing a place destroyed even if there was one faithful person left and so he bargained with God.
We are not so different from this story. At least we have hope that our own thrashing around of doubt, fear and despair is not so different that we can't keep on the journey. No promise of the smooth and easy road here. Just the working out and shaping of who and whose we are. So we have to walk these hard paths sometimes. Ask the harder questions of why we are here and struggle with our own pictures of being deserted and lost. Yet in all this there is a God who loves us and journey's with us. Even when we manipulate, even when we bargain, even when we seem lost and curse and swear, God is present and ready to provide for our needs.
The journey of faith is daring to take the next step, even if it is into the unknown. We can do this. Just like Abram and all those before us.
Comments
Post a Comment