Seasons

Faith

2 years down the road from my conversion experience, I have to admit that my perception of God, faith, hope and love has changed tremendously (and is still changing). As I mentioned below, I experienced God in a physical and tangible way unlike any before, and this had tremendous impact on my life.

But I was still immature and foolish in my faith (I still am, although hopefully less so). I still needed tangible signs, feelings and emotions to uphold the little faith I had. I did love God and hope in him, but this was a hope and love built on a childish faith, a faith driven by the spur of raw emotions. As St. Augustine put it rather nicely in Confessions, it was a faith based on "the stars in the night sky", signs for the non-believer to turn and change.

Yet when we are called "out of darkness and into the light", to become now "sons of light and sons of day", we must stop relying on these stars for our faith. They are but specks in the sky -- tiny and insignificant. Rather, we must turn to the greatest source of light, which is the Son (sun) himself.

Faith really is easy to find, or at least, an immature faith based on signs. How many stars are there in the sky? They are countless. How many signs do we want to look for? "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you." Would God really deny himself to those who seek him? For "What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion? If you then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

But faith isn't easy to keep, which I soon found out as God led me into the first season of my spirituality, when I experienced for the first time a dry spell. Suddenly all the feelings and passions had died down, replaced with a tiredness and disillusionment. I began wondering if everything I had experienced in the past was merely a work of highly driven emotions (although of course they weren't: the healing I had received was still healing, and the miracles still miracles). I began to feel the strain of "persevere in prayer", began to find it difficult to "run the race and keep the faith."

Yet by the grace of God I clung on. There were moments where I felt like giving up, moments where I did indeed give up, but as God led me through this season, I realized at the end of it all that He has always been there, even when I couldn't feel him around. And miracles started to happen once more, not in the way they used to, no longer as tangible, no longer as out of the world, but even greater than I could imagine. People started changing, started turning to God. I realized that even though I couldn't see it, God was still working. I realized that faith in God is irregardless of feelings.

So what is faith? I can't be certain for sure, but I do know that it is the very foundation of our spirituality. You cannot, after all, hope in, or love, something or some being you do not believe in. Faith is about holding still; Faith is about clinging on to the rock and stronghold that is God even as all around us threatens to punish and to destroy us. Faith is about holding on for dear life even as the current is pulls us away. It is difficult. It is tiring. You don't know if you can hold on any longer. You don't know if you should hold on in the first place. But you must. For just as "gold is refined in fire", so too is our faith refined in the trials we face.