While browsing through my trove of past Weekend Inspiration posts this week, I came upon this one from 2012. Reading it again, I was not only moved by the memory of that painful week nearly 6 ½ years ago, but also by the ever timeliness of the truth that we all encounter moments in our life travels when we feel we’re losing faith in Faith.
I’ll be the first to admit that the word “faith” has a very personal meaning for most of us. I think that is why many people often feel uncomfortable talking about it and often avoid or hold back in conversations about the vital role faith plays in their lives.
Whether we openly acknowledge it or not, the fact is none of us could function without some form of faith. When we board a plane, we have faith that we will arrive at our destination. If we did not have that faith, no one would fly. When we pour a glass of water, we have faith that consuming it will be a beneficial act rather than a detrimental one. To succeed in any endeavor, we must have faith in our capability. Simply put, without faith it would be difficult, if not impossible, to look forward to our tomorrows.
St. Augustine wrote that “faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” Whether applied to our spirituality or to our human potential, faith affords us the courage, conviction and freedom to question, explore, experiment, experience, envision, love, learn, dare, emote, repent, kneel, pray, and comfort. It allows us to be confident in the belief that we can do what we haven’t done, and in so doing, we can, and often do, turn our hopes and dreams into reality.
There are those that deny that there is any credence or relevancy to the notion of faith being such a primary power in our lives. Since faith is so rooted in spiritual beliefs, some would argue that its relevancy fades when exposed to the scrutiny of science and rationality and, hence, has no place in the real world. I retort, “hogwash!”
As the popular author Dan Brown penned in his bestselling novel Angels and Demons: “Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth; that which is greater than ourselves.”
But sometimes setbacks can occur in our life’s journey that are so significant, so unsettling, so horrible, that they shake our very core and that can even lead us to question if we are truly losing our faith in faith. Such an event happened this week in our company when one of our employees lost her 11-month old child in a tragic accident.
There is something about the death of an infant that evokes an almost universal questioning on both a human and spiritual level of “Why?” While any death is replete with the burden of loss, the passing of an infant carries with it a sense that their loss exceeds merely that of a precious life. We also feel the profound loss of innocence, potential and opportunity; of what might have been being stolen from us. It reminds us of our own vulnerability and fragility. We struggle to make sense of its senselessness to no avail. All of these feelings shake us to such a degree that even our spiritual faith can be called into question and challenged. We can find ourselves pondering with doubt what we believed to be our rock-solid core. That is where I found myself this week; asking myself if there is a merciful and all-powerful God, how could He allow this to happen?
This question is probably as old as religion itself. It can be a stumbling block for many of us, and for many more at given moments of tragedy such as this. I am sure that there are as many answers to this question as there are people who care to engage in theological discussions. While I certainly do not consider myself an authority on the matter, after much prayer, contemplation, reading of scripture and pastoral letters over the past few days, the understanding that I have chosen is to believe and embrace that while God does allow “bad” things to happen, He does not cause them to happen.
I think that those “bad” things which can engulf us happen because God gives a radical freedom to his people. We are his free people, not his puppets on a string. As such, God does not will “bad” things to happen in life. Rather, “bad” things happen in the freedom that comes with the gift of life, and when such “bad” things happen to any of his children, God also grieves and suffers with us, experienced most vividly by those who embrace Christianity in the hurt and suffering of Jesus for all humanity on Calvary. As a consequence of his sacrifice, any “bad” thing that happens is never the last word. Rather, God is the deepest and last word, and that word is love and the promise of eternal life with God.
I know that neither the mother or father of that wonderful baby are in any condition, amidst their current grief and pain, to joyfully embrace their faith. They are understandably devasted by their loss and they are lost amid their sorrow. They may even feel at this moment that their faith has abandoned them. Comfort for their loss may seem impossible. For us, their brothers and sisters in faith, this is the time for us to pick up the pieces of their shattered hopes and dreams and hold them up in prayer asking God to intercede with his loving and healing power so that, over time, that lost mother and father come to understand that, though they believed themselves as lost amidst this tragedy, they were truly never abandoned.
When you get to the end of all the light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. – Edward Teller
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque