Nov. 9, 2009 issue
We live by faith
By Jim BishopPage:
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The keynote speaker for our annual faculty-staff conference was dishing out some heady stuff. The message was also disconcerting, if one agrees with his basic premise.
Jim Bishop is public information officer at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.
Which is: “Today, everything is geared toward the means. We rarely focus on the ends — that is, keeping foremost in our minds what it is that we are heading toward and aligning our actions accordingly. We work longer and expend more energy without determining where we want to go.”
If that’s true, I thought to myself, then who or what controls our lives and destiny? The clock? Others’ requests and demands? External forces beyond our ability to handle that turn us into mere marionettes in the cosmos?
What role does faith play in this bewildering scenario?
Faith is what sustains me on a daily basis, I declare. It’s that mysterious sense of a personal God behind this universe that I am a small part of. God is in control, and I can connect to this source and move ahead with confidence that my steps will be guided even when I stumble and fall.
Faith ranks right up there with air, water and daily bread as essential for survival.
Faith is the glue that helps hold me together when I feel stretched and fragmented.
Faith is that candle glowing at the end of the tunnel that won’t flicker and go out.
Faith is what keeps me moving, observing, asking questions, taking risks — yes, even doubting — and prodding me to renew or redouble my efforts when it would be easier to say, “What’s the use?”
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
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