Faith necessarily refers us to something beyond ourselves.
CH Dodd
Faith “is the confidence that reality is not the same as what is being felt at any given moment”.
Rowan Williams
The act of faith is not a leap from darkness into light. It is an affirmation that light exists beyond the darkness …..
Morris West
It is only through risking it in actual life situations that we give substance to our belief. (Gerald May)
As we risk, we survive, and so we learn, and faith becomes trust. Real faith in a real world!
Faith should be a protective garment for the pilgrimage. Instead, it becomes a superficial cloak to protect us from the very realities within which we claim to be living. (Alan Jones)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said faith is “the participation in the being of Jesus”.
Jurgen Moltmann says faith is “rising out of indolence and joylessness, and participating in the Resurrection process”.
In other words: the place of Jesus is our place. Living as if that is true, is faith. Seeing with Jesus’ eyes, feeling with Jesus’ heart: here is an imaginative way forward – where we open ourselves to the possibility, like Jesus, of perceiving “another dimension to absolutely everything in this world”.
The life of faith “is a learning how to live here and now in freedom from fear and self-concern”.
What factors can you identify which work against you living by faith?
Can you name what would help?
I cry out in complaint that the world is as it is, and I am sometimes comforted by believing in a pain-bearing, long-suffering love-making God. But l believe only by the narrowest of squeaks, and mainly (because) any other interpretation of life seems even more perplexing and awful.
Jim Cotter
Even before we call on Your name To ask You, O God, When we seek for the words to glorify You, You hear our prayer; Unceasing love, O unceasing love, Surpassing all we know. Glory to the father, and to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit. | Even with darkness sealing us in, We breathe Your name, And through all the days that follow so fast, We trust in You; Endless Your grace, O endless Your grace, Beyond all mortal dream. Both now and forever, And unto ages and ages, Amen |
| Music: Stephen Paulus Text: Michael Dennis Browne |
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation please click on the link below.
