9-20-2020

 Good Morning All, 

          Hebrews 11:1; “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

     During one of my high school English classes, we spent a fair amount of time doing some pre-journalism class stuff.  We looked at what it took to be a good journalist.  A good journalist did not go into a story with a preconceived idea of how the story was going to flow.  When you did this, it was too easy to find the “evidence” that supported your idea and also too easy to discard “evidence” which showed your idea to be false.  A good journalist would always try to answer the following questions: who, what, where, when, how and why?  Once these questions were answered, the story to be told would unfold naturally.

    As we look at these questions, the first four are pretty standard and are really only informative.  We can know who is involved in the story; we know what the story is, and we know where an event occurs, and we can know when it occurs.  These are elements of the story that are very observational.  The evidence can exist for many years allowing us to look back in time and to see the events unfold.  Yet these four questions provide only the body of the work, they only answer the rudimentary questions.  The difficult questions are often how and why.

   The questions of how and why probe into the internal mental and spiritual thoughts, plans and desires of the event.  The how and why can and are at times difficult to imagine.  If you were in a car accident a year ago, you have answered three of the four questions in those 10 words.  Why did the accident happen and how will you go forward after it?  Will you be able to drive again?  Can you go forward?  How will you go forward?  These are the questions you ask.  Sometimes the questions are harder to answer.

    If you are sitting at the funeral of a loved one, like a spouse or a parent; how will you go forward?  How will you go on to the next day or week or month?  What if it is that you are experiencing a very severe sickness, it may take months to recover, if ever?  How do you make it through tomorrow or even the next hour?  How do we go forward?

   Going forward always requires faith.  Going forward is unseen; going forward requires us to trust that it will work out.  How will it work? We must trust God to keep his promise to us.  We must trust God to keep the promise that he made to us in our Baptism to love us and to claim us as his children.  This is what faith is.  Faith is trusting in God’s promise even when we cannot see the path or the method of accomplishing this.  Faith is taking one more step.  Faith is turning one more page.  Faith is knowing that, through it all, God goes with us protecting us from harm and danger and giving us hope for the better tomorrow that he has promised.

Father, strengthen my faith.  Lead me forward by your great mercy.  Uphold me in your hand.  Keep me safe from the terrors of uncertainty.  Lead me to trust in your promise of love and salvation.  Lead me to know that in all things you are in control.  Give courage to those who are facing challenges at this time.  Give them the faith they need to see them through.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret