Christian Reflection and Prayer

It's Time To Move On
December 12, 2010
Third Sunday of Advent(A)

Isaiah 35:1-6,10; Psalms 146:6-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

"Happy is the man who does not lose faith in me" (Mt. 11:6). 

One Sunday morning a certain country preacher opened a sermon on faith with these words: "My dear brothers and sisters, your fields are drying up and you have come here to pray for rain. But where are your umbrellas?"

At the age of four, I knew that God was everywhere. I spoke to Him...But as I grew toward manhood, the more I learned, the less I believed in God...When I was twenty-one, my superior intellect told me that God was a fake. Heaven could not be "up" and Hell could not be "down" because in space there is no up or down. And I knew that everything in creation dies, including the smallest insect and the biggest star.

These words were written by Jim Bishop, the author of many best-selling biographies and histories. "Then one day," he said,

I felt a new experience. I saw the miracle of birth -- Virginia Lee, a child of my own -- and it turned my wandering mind around. I began to doubt my doubts. Gradually I lost faith in my intellect. It was not supplying the needed answers.

I could not see the air, but without it I would die. Thus it is, I decided, with the spirit of man. I needed something to breathe life into a soul that had been crushed by the dominance of the human mind.

What Jim Bishop needed was faith. "I was a slow learner," he said, But, somehow, somewhere, as I groped my painful way, I found my soul...I knew it was there -- wounded, bleeding perhaps, but alive.

I began to pray, and as faith returned to me, I feared that it might dissolve again. So I prayed for continuing faith.

It was only when I gave up -- when I let go and allowed myself to be carried by God -- that I began to really feel His Presence. He was there, and I knew it!

I had wanted proof -- something for my eyes or ears or hands. He wanted me to believe without it. Faith and trust are what He required of me! And He never rested till I found them.1

We think of faith in terms of belief, and rightly so. Faith is believing something. It has been said that faith is believing what you know is true but cannot prove on any rational level. But in Gospel terms, belief is simply the doorway to the House of Faith. Matthew's Gospel contains an incident in which Jesus spells this out clearly and directly. In the story, the people are trying to bring their children to Jesus and the disciples are trying to get the children out of His way. In their view, Jesus has more important things to do than to be bothered with the antics of little children, and so they are trying to protect Him. But Jesus insists that the children be allowed to draw near to Him. Then He tells the people that if they want to become the kind of persons God wants them to be, they must follow the example of those little children. "Let the children alone and do not stop them from coming to Me," Jesus says, "for to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt. 19:14). Earlier Jesus had said to the disciples, "I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mt. 18:3).

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