Should the African impala be the real king of the jungle? Well, its jaws can’t snap a zebra’s femur and its call of the wild sounds more like a squeak, but then there’s this:
What lion can jump ten feet into the air and cover a distance of thirty feet in one leap? Take that, big beasts. The African impala is a magnificent creature and she doesn’t need steroids to crush the world long jump record.
Yet in any zoo a simple three foot wall will keep impalas enclosed and contained in their perimeter. A three foot wall!
That’s because the animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will be landing. Their strong reliance on their ability to leap is weakened by a speed bump. Okay, forget the king of the jungle thing. The impala doesn’t sound that courageous any more.
Admittedly, it really is tough to be confident in something you can’t see, can’t understand, can’t grasp, can’t project in a concrete image or record on a spreadsheet.
How can a young man and woman commit to each other for a lifetime of marriage if they don’t know what challenges lie ahead?
How can a Christian put Godly ethics into practice that deny the obvious odds at hand and risk hurtful consequences?
How can you be sure you’re forgiven when you don’t feel that forgiven?
Faith. And not just any faith, either. A faith that rests in a trustworthy source, even though it can’t understand and can’t see.
That’s not necessarily a strong faith, but rather a faith that admits it can’t understand and can’t see but trusts in another’s strength. God’s strong ability. God’s strong promises. God’s strong determination to save.
So then, it’s the source of faith that makes faith strong, not the determined spirit of faith. This is what Abraham found when God told him that he and his wife – way past child-bearing age – would have a son. “Abraham believed God” (Romans 4:3).
Not himself. Not his hopes. Not his power of positive thinking. Not his ability to comprehend. He believed God.
Looking for a stronger faith? Looking to trust what you cannot see and be freed from the flimsy enclosures of fear in your life? Then contemplate less about your faith and consider more about the object of your faith. Your strong and saving God!
PRAYER: When I can’t understand, O God, then help me believe. When I can’t see what good there is in obeying your word and trusting your will, then help me believe. Make my weak faith, my feeble faith, my struggling faith one that relies without condition on your firm and reliable promises. Amen.
FURTHER MEDITATION: Pastor Wayne Mueller wrote in his excellent book called, Justification: How God Forgives (Northwestern Publishing House http://online.nph.net/cgi-bin/site.pl, “People’s Bible Teachings” series, 2002, p. 65):
“In our pluralistic society, the public media extol the virtues of personal faith and what they call faith traditions. They cannot be caught promoting any particular religion, so they devote all their reporting to the strength of faith and make little or no mention to the object of faith. This persistent media approach popularizes the notion that it makes no difference what you believe, as long as you have faith in something. But such attention to faith damns it with faint praise. The value of our faith before God is not what we put into it but what we get out of it. We are justified [made right with God] not by how strongly we believe but by the strength of what we believe in. Not the determination and grit of the human spirit but the object of faith is all-important. Faith in false gods, faith in our ability to conquer cancer, faith that we will win the ball game … is not saving faith. Jesus will put you at his right side at the final judgment, not because you had faith but because your faith rested in him.”
