Faith

I have a book sitting on my desk. Understand, please, that my desk is a wreck. When I say that this book is always floating on the top of the stacks on my desk, I say it to indicate that it gets picked up often and perused.

The book is called Beyond Words by Frederick Buechner. It's a book of 365 "faith words" with Buechner's thoughts about them. I've never read it front to back, but I pick it up often, either to look for a particular word for a particular purpose or to just flip through it, glancing.

As I "glanced" the other day, I stumbled on the word Faith. If it weren't plagerism, I'd just type here what he says about Faith -- it really is good. Instead, though, I'll pull out a few quotes, and add my own thoughts.

Consider first the classic "faith" scripture (Hebrews 11:1):

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

I wore a new bracelet today -- five silver blocks, each engraved with a different word -- love, trust, faith, charity and hope. Two of those words are in the scripture; the other three expand on it, I think.

Trust: Can faith be proven? Can the existance of God be proven? I think we would all agree that the answer to those quesitons is no. Buechner uses a good analogy. He compares faith to the faith we have that a friend is actually a friend.

I can't prove friendship with my friend. When I experience it, I don't need to prove it. When I don't experience it, no proof will do. If I tried to put his friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I was testing. So it is with the Goodness of God.

Charity: Let's make that an even larger word -- "action." Faith is a verb. If one were to look at the entire chapter 11 of Hebrews, one would find that it is a list of people and their actions. Buechner writes:

Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going, but going anyway. A journey without maps. Paul Tillich said that doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Love: Don't you think that love is the ultimate response of faith? When we believe; when we trust, our response is to love God -- how could we help it? When we have faith that what God says is true, when we place our trust in that relationship, then how could our response be anything but love?

Buechner ends his little Faith essay with one line, and I love it:

Faith can't prove a damned thing. Or a blessed thing either.

Images: Some interesting (to me) ground cover, and a red vine on the bridge in the park.