Faith, Hope, and Love

 

As we begin the month of love, with Valentine's Day around the corner, we focus on the final words of Paul’s ode to love as the mission/vision/purpose statement for the church in Corinth and our church today.

 

There are, in the end, three things that last: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

 

Today, I invite you to take each of these words and reflect on your experiences and encounters.  How would you define faith, hope, and love separately?  What do faith, hope, and love feel like?  Is there someone who embodies each of these words in your life?  How do these three interact and overlap?  Is your faith strong or running on fumes?  What is the dashboard of your soul saying about your level of hope and your trust in love?

 

Author Kathleen Norris once wrote, “This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.”  As much as we may desire/demand a concrete, never-changing definition or description of faith, hope, and love are fluid, constantly in flux ~ just as relationships continue to evolve/expand.   Any attempt to confine these words soon eludes our intellectual efforts.  Norris continues, “But in order to have an adult faith, most of us have to outgrow and unlearn much of what we were taught about religion.”   Wait, is there something you need to unlearn about religion today?  Consider how this connects to the story of Phontine at the well with Jesus yesterday ~ those two breaking down boundaries and biases.

 

So, get out three separate sheets of paper.  Write “faith” at the top of one sheet; “hope” at the top of another; and “love” at the top of the third.  What have you gleaned from hymns, sermons, prayers, and the glimpses of God that left angel dust in your hair through your life with each of these words?  Who inspires and infuses your faith ~ sets your soul ablaze and alive to flourish?  Where is hope knocking on the door of your heart to live this year differently?  How does love walk through the door of your life without knocking, without RSVPing, with arms wide open, taking you into an unexpected bear hug? 

 

I pray this exercise might help you rewind and review your experiences and encounters with each word.  Norris writes, “Faith is not discussed as an abstraction in the gospels. Jesus does not talk about it so much as respond to it in other people, for example, saying to a woman who has sought him for a healing, “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matt. 9:22, KJV). And faith is not presented as a sure thing. Among Jesus’ disciples, Peter is the one whose faith is most evident, always eager. Then, in the crisis of Jesus’ arrest and trial, Peter is the disciple who denies him three times. I do not know the man, he says, and weeps. The relentlessly cheerful language about faith that I associate with the strong-arm tactics of evangelism fails to take this biblical ambiguity into account. I appreciate much more the wisdom of novelist Doris Betts’s assertion that faith is “not synonymous with certainty ... [but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.”  Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith  May your words mix and mingle with Norris’ thoughts as we live with and into faith, hope, and love this week and month.