Open Writing

There was a time when I saw amazing answers to prayer. Once, when our church was building a new auditorium on a cash basis and we needed money to pay for roofing materials, I led our prayer group to thank God for a miracle within three days. To my delight, that miracle happened.

Those days were exciting, but the season for such miracles was short-lived. After that I entered a very dry period in which nothing I desired seemed to happen.

The Bible teaches us that faith is the substance of things hoped for. It is what we start with, the basis of expectation. When Jesus met the disciples on the road to Emmaus and they recounted the terrible events that they had witnessed in Jerusalem, he reminded them of the writings of the prophets concerning the Messiah. Those writings had foretold an untimely death for the redeemer of Israel, and so their failure to reference them signalled a lack of faith.

Nothing is possible without faith because faith assures us that a thing has been ordained. We say, "I have faith that God will heal me," on the basis of Scriptural evidence about God's will. And this faith gives rise to hope.

Hope is what keeps us going through the barren times. When miracles stopped happening for me and I was stuck in a season of drought, all I could do was hope. Faith still existed, but it was uncertain now. Indeed, the longer I was in the wilderness, the less faith I could honestly claim to have. Really, all that was left was hope … and often a dull hope at that.

Hope differs from faith in that it is often recognizably unrealistic. We say, "I hope the sun will come out tomorrow," when it has been raining for days and the forecast predicts more of the same. Sometimes we even get to hoping against hope, which is ridiculous,, but it helps us get through. After all, we tell ourselves, it is better to be hopeful than hopeless - even if a negative outcome is virtually guaranteed.

But such fanciful hope cannot last. Reason eventually takes over and we become contemptuous of our own childishness. I stopped hoping that my eyesight would be miraculously restored, not because I no longer believed God capable of healing, but because my outlook matured. I began to see that blindness was my life's path. It had taught me many important lessons,and as a result, I was focused on a spiritual rather than a natural goal.

Beyond hope, then, came a new kind of dilemma. What should I be if not a living example of God's healing power? That had been my dream throughout the first half of my life. Now I had to find a different principle to live by.

There was a deep emptiness inside me that needed to be filled, but how? Sunday after Sunday, I listened to the liturgy in church and heard, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." Gradually it dawned on me that the love I have for myself is deeply compassionate. It doesn't insist that I believe a certain way. Nor does it insist that I remain hopeful for what no longer seems beneficial. It simply allows me to be who I am, a product of my experience.

This was a moment of liberation for me. I realized, faith and hope make love possible, but like training wheels on a bicycle, they are not permanent requirements. Once you accept yourself as you are, there is no need for them. In fact, devoting energy to them is to waste it, since our ultimate calling is to boundless love.

I am not there yet, but letting go of faith and hope have enabled me to go the extra distance. Frankly, I don't even think it's possible to love unconditionally while holding on to orthodox Christian faith because it is, by definition, exclusive. Only when we accept life as we find it - and others as we find them - can love flow in and through us as it is supposed to.

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