Don’t let your faith get flabby
The Rev. Earl R. Detwiler, Special to The Gazette
Friday, August 7, 2009
“The sun will come out tomorrow ...”
A powerful statement comes from the character, Annie. She expresses an affirmation of tomorrow that in truth remains at best elusive.
We humans try so hard to manage the future. We do well with the past and fair with the present, but the future? No way.
We try to anticipate by seeking the past. We try to create the future making use of control. We even try to predict what will happen next.
For the most part we are miserable failures. The future still remains elusive and uncertain. We try to brace ourselves with contracts, insurance and guarantees. Even those do not help us but only bring options into unanticipated events.
The only means that gives us any basis for managing the future is faith.
Faith gives us reasons when no practical evidence offers anything.
Faith gives us assurance when our self-contrived anticipations fall short of what presents itself.
Faith motivates and prepares and brings hope into the unknown future, unseen, unexperienced.
One time I asked a person, “Why do you get up in the morning?”
His response “I don’t rightly know; I just do, why?”
Talk about an act of faith, yet it went unnoticed.
People expect to get paid. Imagine how workers for the State of California must have felt when the state announced that it would be issuing IOUs. Additionally, some banks announced that they would not honor them.
Again, basic faith is involved.
We work and we get paid, right? Consider what happens when the faith held is not brought into fruition. One human resource person simply said: “No one messes with another’s paycheck without consequences.”
Once faith is breached, the consequences can be loss of trust, loss of hope, along with fear and uncertainty. Imagine how it would be to work under those conditions. Not good.
Too often faith is an assumed part of life without fully understanding its impact until it is too late.
Caught up in a breach of faith we agonize over the implications and suffer from perceived options. There is another way.
In today’s society it is found in various forms in churches, synagogues, mosques.
For me, I find guidance and strength in the experience of Jesus Christ.
For me, he offers options and solutions to the weaknesses of humankind.
For me, Jesus Christ is a way to manage what I cannot — the future. In a real sense, when one misses church, it may be like missing your exercise class or your morning walk.
Nothing worse than flabby faith.
F “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Earl R. Detwiler, pastor at Grace United Methodist Church.