I’ve often heard it said that faith is a crutch for the weak of heart and mind. To look to God as the navigator through the rough seas and narrow canals is just a vain hope placed in ancient fairytales and early traditions. I don’t necessarily have a problem with people saying faith is a crutch because at times I’m thankful to have my faith to lean on when my legs are feeling a bit shaky. It’s easy to take on water or bump up against the rocks when you’re playing captain in the dark. Being captain is empowering and in my experience easier than faith. It’s easier to live with doubts and uncertainties when you feel that you’re in control of your life and destination. You make your choice, you plot your course, your future is in your hands, and the decision is yours. It actually takes a great deal of faith to relinquish the doubts and uncertainty to One that you cannot see. To believe that running aground upon the rocks, listing to the side, watching the water pour in, has its good purposes, requires a heart of brawn. Faith is not for the weak of heart or mind and it’s not a crutch to prop up the impotent. But faith is also not something you can just muster up when you need it. Faith is not a bootstrap mentality. Faith is a gift. Faith is something God bestows upon us. We don’t just decide to believe, but it is put in us to believe, a supernatural gift and it takes supernatural strength to live it out.
When you live in faith, “ancient fairytales and early traditions“ become lifelines of deep truth, given to the faithful as moorings of safe passage, a kind of unobtrusive anchor to the heavens that allows us to move freely yet securely. These ancient texts are full of the living breath of God, and like a fisherman‘s net, they are woven through our hearts and minds for sustenance. Though the winds may grow fierce and the waves sweep over us, as our stomachs churn with sickness from the rolling swells, our shaky hands reach up with a type of instinctual hope, to the moorings of heaven’s gracious gift – – faith.
Perhaps you have this gift, if so; no doubt you have taken on some water somewhere along the voyage and wondered if the moorings had snapped in the storm. The fears rose as high as the waves as you groped for that rope in the dark. But just when you thought you’d lost all hope your hand grasped the frayed edges, and you felt a Hand grab back – – faith, it is a gift.
If you don’t have this gift, well, the good news is that you just have to ask for it. It is freely given to a seeking heart. This faith voyage is filled with much mystery and uncertainty, but in the end, the moorings are secure, unsnappable.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Ephesians 2:8-10
