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Both Directions Require Faith

             Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

Today’s verse was chosen by Biblegateway.com, and I think it worthwhile to consider what Henry Blackabee said in Experiencing God. Summarizing a large part of the book, he said that God reveals Himself where He is working and in His work. This produces in us a crisis of faith. Will we join Him? What can we do? The crisis calls on us to make adjustments to our lives. What this looks like precisely differs from person to person and example to example. In other words, it’s deeply personal, spiritual, and situational.

The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is about giants of faith who did great things because of their faith. Sometimes they received what they wanted. Sometimes, they didn’t. But sometimes, I think we honor them for their faith because they’re in the “Hall of Faith” without really thinking about them, and that can lead to bad thinking about faith and about ourselves. Sometimes, I think we get the idea that we’re supposed to walk through life without any crises of faith, without any adjustments in our lives. It’s all supposed to be easy - not a cloud on the horizon of our faith in any direction. But that’s not what I’ve found as a general rule. I’ve found what Mr. Blackabee and Viktor Frankl described in Man’s Search for Meaning. There is a gap between incident and response. Mr. Frankl called it reaction. That is when we have a crisis of faith. Adjustment is our response, and as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it’s either toward becoming “a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.” (Weight of Glory) Both directions require faith, but only one is wise.

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