What do you believe?

[Mark Dohle]

What do you believe?​

It is good to ask questions directed towards us. Then, seek to answer them honestly, directly, before God. It can be a hard question asking about what we truly believe.

How do I live, treat others, how do I treat myself? How do I judge others, talk about them. The time I spend in prayer every day, is it a priority? Do I seek opportunities to study in the desire to deepen my appreciation of the gift of faith.

Faith is not just a set of intellectual propositions that one accepts. Though it is part of it. What shows our faith is how we live, and the type of struggles we have in our day-to-day encounters with life in a world that is filled not only with dangers, but also with people who do not have our best interest at heart.

We live in a world where everything can change in a split second. Natural disasters for instance, seem to be on the rise. In the last few days thousands have died in floods, and earthquakes. Yes, from one moment to the next everything changes, and all is lost.

Jesus says a lot of things about what faith is about. He commands us, challenges us to, for instance, love our enemies! To forgive 70 x7 times a day! To go beyond what is considered normal and right. If we do not even try to live out what Christ is asking from us, if we have little time for prayer, or too lazy to seek wisdom from the scriptures, does that point to a deep faith? If faith does not flow from the heart, from a loving relationship with Jesus, then it is trapped in one’s head and will either dry up or stay just a beautiful ideal without any real repercussions on our everyday lives.

Self-knowledge, the understanding of how far we are from living out the Gospel message can lead either to despair, or giving up, or hopefully, to making trust in God’s grace and love as a central part of our faith journey.

Humility allows us to see the truth of our situation and to embrace it. Not to give in, but to open or hearts to the light of God’s love, even when we feel that we constantly fail. For when we seek to live a life of faith, and what that entails, it allows us to see on a regular basis the choices we must make to live out our faith commitment to Christ Jesus. Humility allows us to persistently to begin again, and in that we grow in our love of God. For God is faithful even when we fail in our commitment.

So from day to day, slowly, we are healed by our deepening trust in the reality of “God with us”.-Br.MD