It seems like faith is mostly grim-faced determination. You gut out faith. Faith means you're not happy about something, you are tired of the same old struggles, grumpy about your difficulties. What if faith were happy, cheerful, more like eating Oreos and milk just before bed rather than carrot juice and a bowl of broccoli. It is funny in a tense and disconcerting way that Jesus' first public manifestation of faith was during a party. Laughter, feasting and pleasure filled the air as He made His faith mark. A collection of servants and friends scooped up 180 gallons of water in faith, blinked and had wine. If our faith was more like this, we would certainly be less tensed and angry. Faith and laughter seem to be Jesus' way of making faith a lifestyle. The other day I did something pretty immature. I prayed for my favorite baseball team, the Oakland A's to win. I know it is silly for a 53 year-old man with four kids to stoop to such theological lows but I wanted more laughter in my faith. Like salt on my chicken and sugar in my apple pie, it was tasty praying for the A's to win. They were behind and so I prayed for them. Imagine the goofy little smile that crept over my heart when I later logged on the Internet and found they won. Goofy faith is better than none at all. Better to have prayed for something silly and ridiculous than to keep faith balled up inside and have just grim faced determination and a stern solemnity that never walks on water.
The thing is as people put it a miracle fades into a plain event if people don't have any difficulty, struggle or desperation before it shows up. The same as faith. It is painful on the surface but precious as people realize afterwards
ReplyDelete