Faith is always occurring from a place of unknowing
Sunday 24th March 2024
I sat down to write when I thought “I need something to get me going.” I reached for my bag to reread the passage we as a group are currently contemplating. It wasn't the passage it was the need to have something to get me going.
We have all needed stories. We see ancient texts that remain with us because they get people going. But what about before the stories? Well, some are about people who didn't write stories. Take Adam and Eve we are told their story. It continues with Moses and indeed Jesus. Everything we know about them is from stories.
So I play with the scenario that I arrive on this planet and need something to get me going. Something tells me I need food to eat, the body tells me I need sleep by falling into it. Something else tells me that I need not only food I need to connect with the world of which I am a part. That comes naturally with the people I am surrounded with but something tells me that there is more. Like connecting with life itself to live life.
I am aware I will die as I witness that happening to others so what happens to me when I die? I accept that could simply be the end but something nudges me to say there is more. This is not a unique experience, from an early age I had a desire to be loved and to be affirmed as the creature I am. I have spent a significant part of my life seeking to be loved and affirmed and I have found it. Whether it is for food or love there is a seeking.
So seeking to be one with life is not so strange. Just as humankind has evolved with how it feeds itself so it has a history of seeking to be one with life. We see this in the stories of past generations and how through them they wish to communicate a message probably initially to their own but if the message has meaning it will transcend to all people.
I guess I sought out Sunday school as a small child or perhaps I was sent along. No matter once there the stories of God had my interest. Is there a God? Who is God? What might the idea of God represent to humankind? That combined my search for love and God. Somehow very quickly I picked up that God and love were connected if not the same. In finding love I would find God.
The stories of Sunday school gave me something to go on like a map in which I may locate God. For a time the stories gave me a vocabulary, a language and an understanding but like those of whom the stories were written would I have my own experience? It didn't feel like reading such stories was enough I desired my own experience.
I recall wandering around a graveyard as a seven-year-old and seeing a cross it prompted me to think about what I had heard about Jesus dying on the cross to save me from my sins. In my seven-year-old mind, I was grateful that someone would want to die for me to save me from my sins. I understood sins to be the fibs I told. But the idea that I may have to respond had not occurred.
It was at age 9 that I read that I had to say sorry for my sins and ask Jesus into my life to benefit from his dying for me. It was in February 1980 that I said sorry and asked Jesus into my heart. I understood that to mean that I should be good as a follower of Jesus.
It was at age 12 that I heard another story that told me that if I invited the Holy Spirit into my life I could have the same experience as the first disciples. That excited me and I asked what did I have to do. It was agreed that two adults would pray for me to receive the Holy Ghost. Now I accept that these experiences could be considered purely psychological. Indeed they were psychological what may be open to question is my interpretation of what happened.
That experience of being prayed for to receive the Holy Spirit changed my life or at least my perception of life. If I had asked Jesus into my heart at age 9 the Holy Spirit had taken me and baptised me into a vastness. I was now listening to what the Spirit may be urging me or prompting me to do. Unfortunately, the community in which I was a member was divided over whether there was a need for a second experience with God which resulted in my leaving. I lost my way and fell into politics until I found the path again 4 years later. That occurred when I was invited to a youth event. The preacher that night told the story of Samson. The part of the story that hit me like never before was that Samson’s hair began to grow again. That signalled to me that there was a way back to God. That night I decided to resume my relationship with God.
Whether it was a cross in a graveyard, an opening of my heart or being baptised into a vastness all were media to touch life and fulfilled something of my search.
There have been further points that bring me beyond what I have known and into a greater experience of life. Recently I came to a place where I had to decide whether I live according to the beliefs I had held or whether I should entrust myself to life and see what happened. A faith journey is taken by faith which means for it to continue it continues by faith.By its very nature, it means leaps are taken from the known to the unknown.
At the start, I wrote of my prayer, “God give me something to get started.” yet in one sense faith is always occurring from a place of unknowing.
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