If you’ve ever seen a documentary on space; the stars, galaxies and the ever expanding universe… you will begin to feel very small. For example, if there was a ribbon of flat land all the way around the earth on the equator, and you were to one day start out walking around the earth. If [...]
If you’ve ever seen a documentary on space; the stars, galaxies and the ever expanding universe… you will begin to feel very small. For example, if there was a ribbon of flat land all the way around the earth on the equator, and you were to one day start out walking around the earth. If you did this without the aid of technology and with sufficient food and water, by my calculations, walking at a reasonably fast pace of 6km/hr for 10 hours a day with breaks (i.e. a sustainable pace) it would take you almost 2 years.
If it were possible, the same journey around the sun would take you about 200 years, while again if it were possible to walk around the largest star we are aware of (Canis Majoris), it would take you more than 36,000 years. To then leave that star and travel at walking pace to the nearest star would take One Thousand, Five Hundred Million years (1,500,000,000). The distance to travel from one galaxy to the next is far greater again. I’m sure we are getting the picture. In our world, physically, we are so infinitely small to seem almost non-existent. Yet we do exist; but we are tiny. In its context I think faith is also like this.
There are millions of human actions, words and ideas that we can bring before God, such as the following: religion; visions; nature; wisdom; logic; science; thoughts; feelings; hope; faith; action; humility; ceremony; tradition; history; prayer; faithfulness; loyalty; love; reflection; revelation; worship; study; friendship; peace; kindness; good deeds; morality; sacrifice; heroism etc. etc. etc. The list could be almost endless. Yet in this multitude there is one that stands alone, and that is faith. To bring faith before God is to bring nothing else. Faith before God is the recognition that all things visible and known are less important. Faith is the acknowledgment that only what we can’t see really matters.
The following are excerpts from a conversation between atheists and agnostics:
“What you really mean to distinguish, I think, is the difference between ‘fictitious’ and ‘factual’. How do we distinguish between the two? Let us take a fictitious entity, a fairy for example. In order to place this entity in the correct state of affairs (ie – fictitious or factual), we imagine a world in which fairies exist, and compare it with our experience of the world in which we live. We make ‘predictions’ as to what we would observe if fairies existed in a factual state of affairs. And this is another way of asking – “What would our universe look like if fairies were factual entities?” Similarly, I always ask the same question of the theist and the atheist concerning God. The answers from both sides are always unsatisfactory, as they choose to define ‘God’ in ways that I feel are completely innappropriate; and ‘defining God’ is really what we are doing when we ‘name God’.” (Jan Sobieski, Oct 2010 bold mine)
AND
“To put it another way – as a Scientific hypothesis, if my hypothesis is that the Universe was created and is sustained by a powerful, intelligent ‘personal’ being who was intimately involved in sustaining the Universe and whose nature was to be creative and to promote life, but who was in no way dependant on that created Universe, what evidence would I expect to see? What would you expect to see?” (Don, Sep 2010 bold mine).
These are questions relevant to us who admit to know God. Were we to answer these skeptics with an appeal to anything other than faith our answers would be inadequate. Faith is a miniscule thread by which we hang. It says “God is good in Jesus.” There can be no additions to this; “proof that it is true” or “logic that makes sense of it”; these will only fall short. When all is stripped away from us (as it is), what will remain? Only this: the thread of faith; the confession that God is good in Jesus.
This is a true confession, for it is from God; holding to this truth, we will die, whether sooner or later; and holding to this confession we will be resurrected and clothed with a new body, never to die again. Do we speak about the confession? Yes. Do we live in a way to honour the confession? Yes. If our speaking and honouring is causing dishonor to the name of the one we confess do we let go of our speaking and our honouring? Yes. We do not let go of the confession; but everything else can change.
This truth about Jesus that we cling to, can be expressed in millions of words, concepts and languages; even translated into actions, ceremonies, beliefs and love. Yet, like our size in respect to the universe, faith amidst its expression is still a miniscule thread. And it always will be so, until the time of our new bodies, and then the thread will become an infinite confession of the goodness of God in Jesus. Faith… will become bigger.
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” 1 Cor 13:12a
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