Fearless Faith

The best part of each day for many is that moment when new sunshine breeches the eastern horizon quickly illuminating landscapes outside and inside the house. In this season of wintry weather, each ray brings the assurance of longer days and a springtime that cannot be too distant.

On a recent early morning, sunbeams coasted through the windows with radiant promise and produced a noticeable glint from across the room, a confluence of timing, intensity, angle and positioning that demanded a closer look.

A small shiny orb from a glass blowing shop was at the center of attention. The combination of various colored swirls of glass and glitter, heated as one, was vibrant in the nascent sunshine. An optical illusion of depth was created as the curvature of the glass exerted its influence. The sun itself was reflected within, as if paying homage to an infinite universe. It was truly a moment that had to be qualified then and there as a minute or two either direction would have yielded an indifferent result.

Moments when everything falls into place are frequently noteworthy for their simplicity. With scant planning on our part, circumstance aligns with wonder and we are handed a gift. We don’t always comprehend its value when we are pre-occupied with the messiness of everyday life, and in other moments we force the issue by trying hard too hard to find something that is not there.

It is amazing how our role as witnesses to The Divine is often subsumed by our desire to affect the outcome of things beyond our control. Some Christians agonize over their calling, wrestling with what they feel God is guiding them towards. It is especially difficult when close friends, family and peers readily share moments when God speaks to them in various ways. What happens when we attempt to discern our calling only to encounter a seemingly unresponsive god, on our best days? “I don’t know what God intends for me to do,” is a frequent expression for many, though it is too seldom revealed.

Consider, in our second-guessing, that perhaps what we do on a daily basis is a high calling in itself worthy of Christian heraldic attention. Not the kind of discipleship that warps scripture to our own selfish ends, but an alignment of circumstance and wonder that coalesce in the form of a gift — for others as well as ourselves.

The apostle Paul addresses the Corinthians; “If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken.” (2 Cor 4, MSG)

May the brightness we encounter dispel the darkness of uncertainty and doubt. Allow sunshine to pour in and illuminate the moment.