Faith

Faith is one of the simplest words in the Christian lexicon.  Yet it also seems to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks thrown into the Christian Church. Why? Largely because The Church, long ago, got in its own way racing to define what one needed to believe if one was going to have "faith."  So, rather than faith being the experiential thing it is, it became prescriptive by order of the educated, who possess a well-honed recitation of narrow beliefs according to catechism and creed.  The Church said, "We will provide you with the right belief(s) so you can have the right faith" (And then if you don't hold precisely to the line, we can burn you at the stake as a heretic.)

Jesus never knew any kind of "catechism."  The closest he came was having a solid knowledge of the Law on which Judaism was founded. He could answer the questions when the synagogue/temple lawyers showed up to trap him, but he did not preach to his followers about them. In fact, he provided his own set of suggestions on how to live one's life through the Beatitudes. (I like to use the word play Be-attitudes for these.)  Jesus played up the power of faith (if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains) and downplayed the difficulty of faith (you need only the faith of a child.)

Simply, faith is a trust that we will have a tomorrow. Kids have faith that their parents will be there when they wake up.  We can have faith that even in death, life does go on. There are scads of people who spend their lives building guarantees into their faith whereupon their faith becomes grounded in the security of their investments, But that becomes an extremely thin line between "faith" and idol worship. Faith doesn't operate in the realm of guarantee nearly as powerfully as it does in the realm of hope. On the spiritual plane hope and faith keep us going (treasure kept in our hearts) far more than our investment portfolio (where moth and rust can steal or be lost.)  

In what do we have faith?  The four Sundays of Advent often include a weekly focus on four spiritual words that usually include peace, joy, love, and hope.  These four words strongly connect to the personhood of Jesus - his life, teaching, and ministry.  Likewise, they can be our words.  While there can be some instruction involved in teaching children the how-tos, the actual practice of them is a life-long laboratory of experiencing what they mean in the contexts we find ourselves in with each relational interaction. When we give/receive joy, when we practice/experience peace, when we give or receive hope or love we meet the elements of faith that radically alter our lives and those of the people we interact with. We don't need stuffy theological Ph.D.s cramming quilt and atonement and hell down our gullets - nothing about those elements fosters a speck of faith (far more worry if you ask me!).  They're just intellectual snobbery.  As the Apostle Paul ends 1 Corinthians 13: "Faith, hope, and love abide." Let your faith abide in you.  Have faith in the eternity of tomorrow. (Spoken like a great procrastinator, eh?)