I never really had a very good image in my mind of what faith looked like. I had ideas for other things. Love is like what you experience with family and friends, the desire to protect and cherish. Joy is the bone-deep happiness that cannot be dimmed by outward circumstances. But what was faith like? How could I explain it to others? How could I explain it to myself?
The best I could come up with was hope on steroids. The most supremist of all the hopes that ever hoped before. But deep down, I knew that it was wrong. Hope, after all, is the wish for an outcome or circumstance that we do or don’t want, but it needs no merit or evidence. Often we hope the hardest when we see the odds lining up against our favor like when we’re out driving and the clouds are gathering. Please no rain, please no rain, please no rain…just let me make it home!
But faith? It’s the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Faith is the reason our hope in Him is not mere wishing, but the basis upon which it rests. And while it’s certainly nifty to know that our hope for the future is not like wishing on a star, but based on the promises of God Who has sworn to never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5), that faith in Him is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:20), that He holds all things in His hands (Ps. 31:14-15), it still felt a bit nebulous when I tried to form a visual image of what that looks like.
One day, when pondering this problem, I was wandering through my living room and plopped unceremoniously into the easy chair. To my immediate shock and horror, the chair wobbled, tilting uncertainly and in that flash, my gravity flashed before my eyes. Thankfully, the chair itself was sound and settled back onto all four feet. Once I’d carefully removed my fingernails from the chair arm, I pondered this. I’d not for a second doubted that the chair would hold me when I’d tossed myself into it. My hope that it would hold me, was vague at best. I had the expectation that it would hold me. Not because I could see all of the things that held it together but because, by the nature of it being a chair, I believed the promise it gave: I will hold true.
So too, I realized, should be my faith. I don’t see all of the things that God is doing as He holds together the universe and enacts His will to all who love him according to His purpose. I do not see the heavenly realm into which many have gone before and into which I shall one day pass. But by nature of Him being God, He has His own promise: He will hold true.
And because He is God, I will believe, and so, I shall sit.