By Elizabeth Evans Hagan
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith, Abel.… By faith, Noah.… By faith, Abraham.… By faith, Isaac.… By faith, Jacob.… By faith, Joseph.”
And the list could go on.
Hebrews 11, the place where these words are found, has often been a mystery to me. I was warned early in seminary: don’t dare preach on Hebrews — unless you want to find yourself throwing things at the wall in confusion of what it all really means.
But recently the words of Hebrews 11 have stuck in my head and don’t seem to be leaving anytime soon. Mulling them over, I’ve come to realize how little in our modern world we do “by faith.”
For those living in the ancient world, where one’s livelihood was always one natural disaster away from total destruction -– and no FEMA in place to bail anyone out — to live “by faith” was only natural.
There were no weather reports to tell them how to dress for the day. There were no stock market updates to tell how and when to trade their goods. There were no projections about global warming, birth-rate patterns or even medical odds of dying if one did x, y or z.
So many daily tasks had everything to do with faith, and for those who had heard the call of Yahweh, it had everything to with faith in a good God. Not to over glamorize such a time in history, but when was the last time you or I did anything that was completely on faith?
It’s rare. Modern medicine and technology help us to feel quite in control of our own lives. Genetic testing even allows for expectant parents to choose the sex of their baby if they like.
If we turn on a light switch, we expect lights in our house to come on and give us light for as long as we want it. If we live as stress-free as possible, exercise regularly and eat more good stuff than junk, we believe we’ll outlive our couch-potato friends.
Back to faith — what about our lives these days manifests itself “by faith?”
I believe that faith is a lot like standing on the edge of a giant cliff and deciding to jump to the bottom, because you were told that there were some of your hiking buddies down at the bottom with a large trampoline — even though you are so high up that you can’t really see them.
Faith is like beginning a road trip without knowing where you are going to end up — taking with you maps, guidebooks and phone-a-friends to call for places to stay — and trusting these provisions will be enough to make it to somewhere desirable and with peace of mind to enjoy whatever you see when you get there.
Faith is like a stubborn grandmother who is told to leave her home of 40 years because the floods are coming. Yet, she refuses to change her plans to what everyone else advises her to do. She has weathered a few strong storms in her life, and even if the storms do come, she says, “There will be scared children to hug and neighbors to share my canned goods with.”
We often scoff at such behavior, calling folks who display it foolish. What good can come from jumping off a cliff? Why would you set out on a trip without knowing your destination? Why would you not evacuate if there’s going to be a hurricane?
If we are going to be the people of faith that we talk so much about in church every Sunday, however, we have to be willing to take a risk every now and then. We’ve got to take big jumps. We’ve got to start journeys that don’t fit into a 15-year strategic-plan destination. And, we’ve got to stick close to each other, even when the waters rise.
This doesn’t mean we won’t get lost, have our hearts broken or even that we’ll have normal blood pressure all the time, but if we were serious about walking by faith, I imagine our lives and our churches would be viewed as a little more “crazy” than we are right now.