Deep faith

It may be said of me, when I die, that I was a man of deep faith.

To which I can only say, not deep enough.

We were born to shoulder the suffering that faith requires; but we are not strong creatures. The cynicism that life engenders renders our trust a weak and flaccid thing; and we turn it towards things, not towards love. We take our own examples in this; and they are the worst ones. 

There ought to be something better in us.

The good has a wish to be born. But first, we must search for it. We must woo it. It does not fall into our arms wantonly, like a lover in the heat of passion. It is hard-won. On earth and in this material world, all of the power seems to be in the hands of the enemy; and the enemy is a beauty difficult to appreciate or measure. We do not want the chaste virgin of abstinence and prayer; we want the prostitute who whispers passionately in our ear and tells us of our greatness. We will buy her wares because they can be had for money, and immediately.

All this goes unseen; because we love blindness as much as we love ourselves. The two things go hand in hand. And God forbid we should peek beneath the carpet to see what we have swept under there. We would rather tread on it in assurance and in ignorance of the way it rots the fiber.

This is not to say that there is no hope; there is. But it is to say that we do not seek it with enough energy, and we would rather meet it with the greed of our lust than the security of any trust. That cynic mentioned earlier always looks at hope with a skeptical eye, the eye of a critic. And as to faith, it is viewed with suspicion. With doubt. 

If we would but once go forth wholeheartedly into the darkness with faith as our armor and love as our trust, I daresay hope would follow most obediently. 

Yet it must come after the faith and the love, because without them it has no eyes and cannot see; it has no protection, and is defenseless.

Of course one is reminded, of what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:13:

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.