Faith
This is a good one! (Of course, they are all good, but I need this one!)
The word Emunah is the Hebrew for Faith. The root word is the Hebrew word for Truth. So, Faith is not a whimsical, hoped-for reality, it is based in Truth. It arises from Truth.
That Truth is that there is a God and that Jesus came down from heaven and died for our sins so that we could have everlasting life…a gift that we don’t deserver by our design and by our choices.
I hear the comment sometimes that we all rely on faith. When we sit in a chair, we have faith that it was built correctly, that it is not damaged, and that it will be strong enough to hold us up. Usually we are rewarded with the fact that the chair is all these things. Some of us know the surprise of finding out when it does not!
Truth
Consider the excitement! As I read today’s passage I found my excitement rising. When I think of my own faith, it is a lot of the hoped for kind. Once in a while I get into a mindset of the “Wow, what if this is all really true!” What an amazing future there is in store!
I know that it may seem weird for me to write that I think this way, but my faith seems to be tested all the time. Yet, there are so many things I take on faith already…much of it based on hope and what I’ve read…why should I not believe in God as much as I believe in the chair I’m sitting on as I write this?
When I do get to this point, I’m totally thrilled! That is the taste of heaven…when all things are known, when pain is gone, when death is gone, when we are constantly in the presence of our God. Wow!
Faith in the Unseen
Another phrase that I hear often is the definition of faith, I like the King James one the best…”Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
The “truth” is in the “substance” and the “evidence”…these are things in the world, not in a fanciful imagination. This reference to real things is the truth upon which we build our faith. The “substance” is the knowledge of the possibilities of a new world. The draw that we have to God that is built into all of us and cause us to seek Him (though we may find ourselves distracted by false gods. The things that are “hoped for” are nearly universal…peace, justice, tranquility, etc. This united desire, and the desire to know a God that can bring this about is the “substance” of the things we hope for.
The “evidence” is the most clear. To me, the evidence of a God are so obvious…I simply look into the night sky and fathom even a fraction of what our scientists have already discovered about this universe we live in. What an amazing creation! All the way from clusters of galaxies to the smallest single-cell organism. The complexity within complexity that assures a profound design. To think that this would all come about by chance is to be a fool in the presence of profound evidence to the contrary.
Mission – Take a word from the word of God today and give it your strongest amen, the total yes of your heart, soul, mind, and will.
(Note: Amen also arises from the same root word of truth…note how it is phonetically similar to Emunah.
Mark K.