Faith

Here's where all this talk about my blind dog comes back to meet us: at the simple matter of faith. 

See, I am noticing how hard it is for my newly-blind friend to navigate the world using senses that she's apparently never paid much attention to, and I've reflected from time to time on how well my own senses pick up in an emergency. But the thing that I really think about is how my faith works in moments when I need it, but am not sure how to find it. 

We all have those moments. Those times when everything we seem to know is called into question, when the darkness settles in thick for a season, when something seems to almost choke us out. Everything that we thought we knew isn't working, and we need to rely on something else to get us through. 

We have prayed the prayers, read the verses, sung the songs, even lifted our weary hands into the air in worship, and nothing seems to be connecting us to the source of strength that we really need right now. Try as we might, the practices of our faith are failing us. 

This is where the substance of our faith has to come in. 

This is where all those disciplines we've invested ourselves in come to help us. 

This is where our auto-pilot has to kick in and carry us through. 

This is where so many of us fall. 

It really is. This is where so many persons who have thought they were faithful have fallen because their faith has failed them. They have no auto-pilot. They just kind of went along with things, floating in the streams of life, trusting that if they ever needed it, these currents would carry them. 

But all of a sudden, the waters shifted and now, life has them swimming upstream, but there's no muscle memory for their faith. They haven't exercised it, so it doesn't know how to push back. All it knows how to do is be carried along and suddenly, being carried along just isn't good enough. 

There is a way that keeps believing even when it doesn't seem possible. There is a way of deep knowing in the depths of your soul that can't be shaken, even when none of the things you've depended on are working. 

We read the Bible so that it gets down in our bones. We sing the songs so that they get woven into our hearts. We pray the prayers so that we know what the voices sound like - ours and His. And then, on the days when the Bible seems boring or stupid, the songs seem trite or annoying, the prayers seem worthless, the postures just aren't working, there's something deep down in the fabric of our being that still knows...still knows even in a season when it can't be reminded...and that faith - that faith - is what carries us through. 

That's what I really think about as I watch my blind girl try to navigate her world in new ways. 

If everything you think your faith is came crashing down tomorrow - if you lost your church, grew weary of your Bible, were annoyed by the repetitive choruses of worship songs, forgot your voice, didn't recognize God's, or could barely lift your weary hands, would the faith that you have established as the background, as the foundation, as the structure of your very life have a way to carry you through? 

Would you still be able to believe if you found yourself in a season when you couldn't connect? 

If not, what would you need to start doing differently, today, right now, to start establishing that kind of faith in your life? 

Because I promise you - those seasons are coming. They come for all of us. 

Are we ready?