Snatches of Faith

By the end of this month I’ll have a new license plate on my car. It won’t be one of the new, free “In God We Trust,” vanity plates. I’m relatively sure I trust God, on most days. What I’m less sure of is: how much I trust God, on any given day, and what is it I trust God with / for, on any give day. There’s a clue.

Any day, every day, is a given day. Each day comes to us as a gift from God. Whether we are mindful of that, of course, is a whole ‘nother story!

Some folks I know contend that what we call faith really is trust. The intellectual, emotional state of believing may best be described, in English, with the word, confidence – a synonym for trust. Of course, in our everyday speech we don’t make much of a distinction between what we “believe” and what we “know.” It’s only when we say things like, “I’m taking X ‘on faith,’” that we seem to be admitting that our knowledge about X is less than certain, still we choose to hold on to, i.e., “believe in” the truthfulness of X.

One thing I do trust God, “in, with, and under,” as Luther was fond of saying, is what Jesus said in John 10:27-28: My sheep hear my voice. I know the, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

Try preaching on that whole Good Shepherd shtick. It’s not a very urban metaphor. By the time the preacher explains all the nuances of agrarian shepherding and Hebrew prophets’ usages of shepherd imagery for various and sundry Israelite Kings - past, present and future - listeners have mentally retreated to that emotional space in the brain where decisions about the ACLU’s suing the state of Indiana over “religious” license plates are made!

I don’t know, for certain, that I’ve heard the Shepherd’s voice. I believe I’ve heard it before and I believe I will hear it again. I do know that I’m not the world’s best full-time follower.

I don’t know that I’ll have eternal life. I do trust I will and I believe it’s already begun. I have no clue what it means that I (they) will never perish. We translate the Greek word, apollumi, as perish. Its literal definition is: to destroy, as in to put out of the way entirely, abolish, put an end to, ruin, to render useless, or to kill.

I’ve also come to trust that no one snatches me out of the Shepherd’s hand. They don’t have a chance. I do it all for them! No sooner do I trust that I’m held in the palm of God’s hand than I jump off / out, of my own volition. Perhaps it’s because I think I know more or better. Maybe I believe I’m the better navigator. Looks like I’m much more suited to a vanity license plate than I’d like to admit.

I take all sorts of wrong turns, make outrageous maneuvers, go down blind alleys, cross untold byways, retrace my tracks to nowhere and wonder how I arrived onto a strangely random, dangerous road. On most occasions, I have the audacity to blame God for the lost-ness in which I find myself!

Part of what makes that doable, not right but doable, is that God always arrives at my lost-place before I do. I’m learning to trust that. In Romans 8:35ff Paul writes: The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (The Message)

Lord, I believe; help my unbelief. Trusting in you, I’ll not snatch vanity from the embrace of victory!