Foraging through the house, equally through my mind, I searched for my watch. Where did I put it? I’m sure I left it on the coffee table. Or was it on the kitchen table? No, I think it was next to the sofa in the sunroom. I enjoy being lost in time but not without it. I needed my watch to complete the morning before leaving for work. I’m sure I could function, but frustration would chide my inability to remember where it was. I quieted and thought.
I believe Christ when he says faith is not what is seen, but unseen. I also think it is sometimes unfelt, reached for and ungrasped, and straining to understand it, misunderstood. Faith possesses an intangibility, an untouchability the rest of the world attempts to supplant but never satisfies. Faith is language with all the nuance and no good word to describe it.
Today’s fashion allows me to believe in my own version and conclusions about faith. Such a fashion exposes a decentralized accommodation of self-perception, a self-determining faith without anxiety. Can something unknowable and known be so easily reduced?
Not too many years ago, on a random day, practicing my golf swing as I always had, a thought surfaced in me. Rather than all this mechanical, technical effort at perfecting my motion, maybe I should begin with the end in mind. From that day forward I attempted to swing to a balanced finish. Over time, the effort presented a self-organizing principle. My motion obeyed my intent to reach that balanced finish and improved.
If faith had created in me anxiety and struggle, a tangible and guttural spiritual warfare, the thought also occurred I should begin to live it with the end in mind. And thinking this, I could not omit God. If Christianity offered truth, God was the end for me… and faith, the means, though it seemed imperfect.
Mindfully then, church as I knew it, with all its social rearrangement and human pettiness, edged toward irrelevance amid my doubts. But simplicity is a fine teacher and faith drew me in, allowing me to realize God was there if He came with me. And present, He waited for me.
Belief is a lot easier than faith and doubt fueled my questions leading to deeper understandings. Doubt and unknowing preceded my asking as I think it must. Ask and receive, Christ said. Why didn’t someone tell me it was hard? God’s constancy combatted my doubts and rooted me in returning to ask again. My journey continues.
And the darkness covers me sometimes
And the road is long but it always unwinds
And I find if you take your time
You will make it fine
(Lyrics from Dark Road: Sarah Jarosz)
I found my watch. Never missing, it was right where I left it, on my desk next to the computer. How could I ever doubt? It just took time.
“Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” (Matthew 11:15, NKJV).