Faith

I inherited faith from my great-grandmother when I was ten. It arrived in the shape of a yellow seed suspended in a clear, marble-sized ball. Although the charm appeared quite ordinary, I was ecstatic. I had been taught that if I had the faith of this tiny mustard seed, the entire world would be mine. It would be no problem, even for a child, to trump such a piddled piece of faith.

But at ten I lacked intimacy with faith. I knew it only as a synonym to words like hope, wish or belief. Certain that it would grant me the life I wanted, I slipped faith on a tarnished chain and wore it around my neck for years.

A few decades and a host of calamites later, that mustard seed didn’t seem so tiny after all.

What I learned by living is that faith is constant. It is an unbending, omnipresent, indelible force of life that cannot be contained, either in a heart or a glass ball. It only appears transient, often in the fleeting on again off again interim moments of our need, because we personalize it. But faith is invariable. It alters its nature for no one, and its nature is to sustain, not to console. Besides, it is only in the rearranging-- the ripping apart of our trust, and the inevitable stitching back together of it --that we can truly understand the power behind the divine essence of faith.

As we journey through life, we float along a river of sorts, with frightening twists and delightful turns; never sure of what awaits us just around the bend. Faith is the steady, unremitting breath of God buoying us along. In the midst of death, terror, and evil, faith passes under us, around us, through us; its steady current keeping our heads bobbing just above the surface.

Even on days when we can’t seem to make it off the bathroom floor, much less to our place of worship, faith is alive and well in our lives, doing its thing whether we are aware of it or not. In fact, it is often on such days as these that faith leaves its permanent mark on us. True miracles are born not out of our desire to embrace faith, so much as faith’s indiscriminate desire to embrace us.

Martin Luther King said that faith was “taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” I don’t believe you have to be strong, or resilient or even aware of the steps to receive its gifts. You only need to surrender to life, with all of its shortcomings and imperfections, and allow the momentum of faith to keep you inching forward, one stair step, one winding river bend, at a time.

After all, it’s doubtful any of us will see the entire staircase at once, or the end of the river, at least not while on this earth. It has to be enough for us to know that, despite the horrific events of our lives, we are still divinely in motion.

Whether you experience it in God, your family, or just in yourself, whether you display it through a mustard seed, a red string, or other talisman, know that in its own quiet, mysterious way, the infinite power of faith is carrying you ever forward in life.
Pass it On.