And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of
these is love. 1 Corinthians 1313 (NRSV Updated
Translation)
Yesterday, I invited you to look at the mystery of your life, that we
don’t always know fully what we are doing.
Every day you wake up with the ingredients and information from your
past to meet the unknown present/future moments you will encounter. The story in your mind, heart, and soul all
try to help you navigate the waters of today.
Side note: sometimes the story in your mind is different from
the story in your heart.
Hence, we don’t have a single, unified story, but rather, stories all
competing to control the steering wheel of our lives. I know this is happening for me when I feel a
pit in my stomach. When my mind, heart,
soul, body, and life are out of alignment, that is when I wake up at 3 a.m.,
which is the worst possible time to try to figure out life!
On your art/chart this week, I want you to trace the three words of God’s
story: faith, hope, and love.
Look at that early column of where you lived, the people you knew, the stardust
of experiences/encounters in that place, and who God was; what did faith feel
like there? I know for me in Cedar
Rapids at my UCC church, faith at an early age was a box to fit into. God was a certain way, and I had to appease
or impress God to earn a gold star, which, by the way, was exactly what I got
on the attendance chart in Sunday School!
As a teenager in Des Moines at a different UCC church, the wider culture
was all aflutter about “thinking outside the box”, so I thought God couldn’t be
contained or confined; God was the “holy other” (thanks to Karl Barth for that
phrase). In seminary in Minnesota, I
learned God was the ground of being (thanks to Paul Tillich for that phrase). God in my first church became the stable
ground where I could build my deep desire to be a good minister. Do you start to see how faith has taken
different shapes depending on where I was, who I was around, and what was
happening within/around me?
Faith is never constructed or deconstructed in isolation. Faith is impacted and influenced by what
is all around us and who is around us. Remember from yesterday, in the nanosecond
between an encounter and your response, your mind/heart/soul fills in a
story. And because our body is built to
conserve calories, we will take the easiest path/the one that is known. You see, Frost was right that to take the
path less traveled involves intentionality, attention, and doesn’t happen all
that frequently because it requires energy in an exhausted world. Today, you may want to draw a shape of your
faith or write down descriptions of faith tracing through the timeline of your
life. Or maybe what role faith played in
that moment. I realize all three words
(faith, hope, and love) are not easily captured. Please be gentle with yourself. Remember, you are not turning your chart of
the art of your life for a grade. Nor do
you have to finish this right now! There
is grace and space as you listen to your life.
If you have questions about this, let me know. Amen.
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