Sowing Faith (10/7/2021)

[Third article in a series on living Christ daily through the prescripts of the Peace Prayer]

“LORD, make me an instrument of your peace…Where there is doubt, let me sow faith.” Uncertainty marks our modern time. The more we explore and discover in fields of science, medicine, and technology, the more the world spins in uncertainty as we struggle to understand what is real, what is virtual, and what is dependable. The media contributes by offering a buffet 24/7 of corruption, international intrigue, and horrific events designed not so much on truth any more but on polls that show what sells. Doubt, the lack of certainty or conviction that there is one, loving LORD of all, flourishes in this environment of war, political intrigue, epidemics, and natural disasters. If ever there were a time for passionate discipleship, it is now.

Faith isn’t something we simply believe, it informs our decisions, it conforms us to Christ, it transforms us from passive to active disciples. Faith was never meant to be silent and passive. Faith has always been a gift to be lived out loud through actions. Faith requires witnessing to that which we believe, sometimes in words and sometimes in deeds. Faith illuminates the world by fighting against the darkness of doubt.

Those of us who have embraced our loving LORD’s command to pick up our crosses and follow must do so with great passion. We must be eager to share that which we know, that there is one, true, loving LORD of us all who created us all, who died to save us all, and who is with us in this age to breathe into us the love and hope we need to make us one. We must be willing to share our faith in conversations with others, finding that in doing so it not only illuminates the path for the other but deepens our conviction to stay on the one, true way.

Those of us who call ourselves Christians know at our core Jesus Christ, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” We owe it to our loving LORD and to our brothers and sisters to bring that way, that truth, that life to the forefront, to the surface, to the discussion. When we encounter a brother or sister struggling, we must live Christ by being present and loving to them, we must share Christ in our conversation. We cannot simply carry Christ within us as if we were a locked tabernacle whose contents are for us alone. While we believe that the LORD remains within us, the LORD is not an inanimate stone that sits but rather a living well of love that overflows.

As we go about our ways this day, let us commit to being witnesses in the world, living the love of the LORD with certainty and conviction sharing our faith with others, helping to encounter and defeat doubt with the life giving and sustaining faith in the one true and loving LORD God.

Until tomorrow, love well.