“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.”
Hebrews 11:1

Faith: it’s been the motivation of songs, poems, and epic tales, of chisel to marble and brush to canvas, of wars both ideological and and those that spill blood on the battlefields.

I’ve been thinking a lot about faith lately. It mystifies me. Not on a personal level; I’m not having a crisis of belief or anything. Not in a religious capacity…there’s always a chance that I’ll try to tackle conflicting ideologies, but today is not that day.

The faith I’ve been pondering is defined as

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
3. Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance

It’s the human capacity for faith that boggles the mind. As Christians we often site God’s invisibility as reason people struggle to believe in God. The more I’ve reflected on that, the more I think it’s poppycock. It’s a struggle because faith is so fragile and so seldom rewarded in our lives. Think about it: we put our faith in relationships – the best of which are complex and difficult to maintain; we put our faith in political and religious leaders, who in their humanity are bound to disappoint eventually. We live in a world where countries are in political unrest, reality television has tarnished the very definition of reality, and the planets of our childhoods are no longer planets.

The fact that we still have the ability to have faith in anyone or anything is a miracle. Our innate need and hunger for God and something bigger than ourselves is so great that it overcomes the fraility of faith. Henry David Thoreau said “The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.” The world has failed us, but there’s still hope for something more, and that More is so much infinitely greater than we could ask or imagine that He makes faith worth the risk.