If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that I don't know much at all. Anything I do know for sure, aside from the factuality of my own ignorance, is known through a mechanism we call faith.
There are some things we just KNOW. Yet, we can't explain just how we know them. We 'feel it in our bones' and are truly convinced of it in our hearts. This is not the kind of faith that can be taught, but rather, it is the kind that must be sought. If we recognize that we are lacking faith, we need to ask for more. Sounds ironic, doesn't it?
I'm not necessarily talking about religious faith. I don't care what you call your higher power, as long as you don't call it late for dinner!
Not believing in a higher power also doesn't make someone completely 'faithless'. Unfortunately, many people are raised by skeptics and doubters - a powerless lot, but a real type of people, nonetheless.
I ascribe power to faith-based people because I have learned through experience that believing is seeing and that it's definitely NOT the other way around. Besides, if we're only supposed to believe in things we can see, then we must assume that nobody has a brain in their heads, right?
We can't just ascribe a context to faith when we want to manifest things into our lives. In fact, faith is the very context by which we live our lives. Whether we consider ourselves to be 'believers' or not, even mundane faith (ie. knowing, based on past events, that the sun will rise tomorrow) requires us to admit to this contextual perspective.
Lord, please DON'T ever buy me a Mercedes Benz. I'd rather you buy food for the whole world first.
The most popular definition of faith is that it's 'the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen.' To summarize and reiterate, believing is seeing.
There are a lot of people struggling with the 'manifest your destiny' and 'name it and claim it' mentality, which says that you simply must declare what is yours and it will be brought into your life.
Maybe I've been jaded by hearing far too much talk and not seeing nearly enough walk, but I believe that what we are meant to have is not merely a function of desire. That which is truly meant to be is revealed to us and it is then our responsibility to hold the vision for it in our lives. We do manifest our destiny, but we also must take steps to make it happen.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said that 'faith is taking the first step, even when you can't see the whole staircase.' This means, if we truly want a certain reality, we have to be willing to take a leap of faith to make it happen.
For example, if you believe you are meant to be healthy and you have had visions of yourself in radiant health, yet you continue to sit around eating garbage and breathing chemicals, would you expect an angel to just 'poof!' give you a new body? Or, would you make changes in order to make your dreams a reality?
To paraphrase John Mayer, I know that we are so much bigger than our bodies give us credit for! We are spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies and, like The Police would say, 'we are spirits in a material world'. I contend that the material world is the true illusion and that what is unseen is more real.
My inspiration this week comes from Mrs. Leonie Herrera-Gillham, the real life saint who founded the King's Children's Home, which is the subject of my feature story. One woman's vision and subsequent action has completely altered the destinies of countless lives, for the better. Her faith is absolutely contagious!
Plenty of us have a deep-seated desire to serve and to be part of something bigger. Doing so, however, would not only completely take us out of our comfort zone, but it would probably also require adjusting how we relate to our friends and family and/or require us to cut out materialism, for example. What gets us across the chasm from comfort zone (on the couch) to where we want to be? The answer is faith, plain and simple. We must apply at least a modicum of faith to every circumstance we want to see changed, improved or removed. Why would we work out and eat right every day if we didn't think it would make a difference? Why would we give money to the poor if we didn't think it would help?
Someone once said, 'they that die by famine, die by inches.' Yes, inches on the bellies of fat people!
You can call me late for dinner, but you'd better not call me faithless. I'll take the leap any day.
