Okay, friends, let’s talk about faith. Not the Sunday School, paint-by-numbers kind, or the cool flannel-graphs (I loved those) but the real, gritty, gut-level stuff.
We’re diving into Hebrews 11, verses 1 through 3, and I gotta tell you, these verses? They’re fire (more cringe eye-rolling from my kids).
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
Boom. Right out of the gate. Confidence. Assurance.
These aren’t just warm fuzzies, they’re verbs. They’re active. Faith isn’t passive, it’s a muscle. It’s something you do. It’s leaning into the unknown, believing in the unseen.
Think about it. How much of your life is based on things you haven’t seen? Love? Hope? Justice? You can’t hold them in your hand, weigh them on a scale, but they’re real, aren’t they? More real, sometimes, than the chair you’re sitting in.
That’s faith.
It’s the deep-down knowing that there’s more to this story than what we can see with our eyeballs.
The writer of Hebrews goes on: “This is what the ancients were commended for.” Whoa. Think about that for a second. Abraham, Sarah, Moses, all those folks we read about in the Old Testament – their faith wasn’t some abstract concept. It was how they lived. It was the engine of their lives. It propelled them forward, even when things looked absolutely insane. They were commended, not for having all the answers, but for daring to trust in the questions.
And then, the kicker: “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what was seen was not made out of what was visible.” Mind. Blown. This is huge.
The writer is saying that the very fabric of reality, the cosmos itself, came into being not from something we can see, but from something…else. Something beyond our comprehension. Something…divine.
Think about that. Everything you see, everything you touch, everything you experience – it all originates from something invisible. Something beyond our grasp. That’s faith, right there. It’s acknowledging the mystery, the vastness, the sheer wonder of it all. It’s admitting that we don’t have all the answers, and maybe, just maybe, that’s okay. Maybe won’t don’t just stop at acknowledging this mystery, but we move closer and closer to embracing it as well.
So, what does this mean for us, today? Well, maybe it means we can stop trying to control everything. Maybe it means we can relax a little bit into the mystery – lean into it. Maybe it means we can start to trust that even when we can’t see the path ahead, there’s something there. Something good. Something beautiful. Something…more.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to embrace the unseen. To lean into the questions. To have faith. Not because we have all the answers (because we don’t), but because we trust that there’s a story being written, a story much bigger than ourselves.
And maybe, just maybe, we’re a part of it.
Grace and Peace,
-Pastor Scott.
Pastor's Ponderings 