What's the best thing about your faith?

I was challenged by a post on a recent blog I read that asked, "What is the best thing about your faith?"

Here's my answer:

My experience of faith in Christ has been a rollercoaster ride. There are times when it all makes sense, clicks, fits and seems the perfect solution to all of life's problems. Then there are the other times... The times when those near and dear to me suffer. Dark days, when all around is crushing and pushing me, and worry is almost constantly on my mind.

In these times, I still pray - maybe more so - and mostly, I don't hear anything.

It's in these times that I truly doubt the very existence of God himself.

Thankfully he knows this response and, little by little, his love and grace break through my darkness. As green shoots of all kinds of plants sprout up from concrete pavements, God's love, life, grace, care and provision find me again. In fact, it's quite possible that they never leave me.

As one psalmist says, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me".

What's the best thing about your faith? Post a comment...

I keep pestering my friend, Marjorie, to get a blog spot and share her pearly wise words, but no luck so far.. In the meantime, she has relented and allowed me to publish her response to my last post as a "guest blogger". Enjoy!:

Carpe Diem, not a bad philosophy. I think Jesus had a slightly different take, but something similar - "consider the lilies, (and the Buddha's lesson on the Golden Flower sort of echoes the idea), some poetry quotations with echoes:


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. (William Blake)

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is. (Tennyson)

Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! O weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Shed not tear! O shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu--I fly--adieu! (John Keats)


The secret of the flower, which both Jesus and Buddha tried to teach each in their own way, is that the outward life and beauty we find in nature and in ourselves is transitory and fleeting, but real nonetheless.

We cannot hold onto life and beauty by grasping and clutching it to ourselves, that way leads to endless anxiety and bottomless greed. So seize the day, but hold it lightly and gently, it can't last, the only lasting beauty is beauty of the soul, because that's eternal.

Sieze the moment

I've been reading a great book "12 simple secrets of happiness at work", and its got some great encouraging phrases throughout.

One tickled me this morning, though, and I thought I'd share it with you.

The author, Glenn Van Ekeren, is encouraging us to live in the moment. He says:

"If you let yourself be absorbed completely, if you surrender to the moments as they pass, you live more richly in those moments".

He goes on - "Some people are always preparing to live. Someday their job will be better. Someday they will have time for those they love. Someday may never come."

And then the bit that tickled me:

"Life isn't a dress rehersal for the main event. You are living the main event. Live every minute of every day to the fullest.
Seize the moment - Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the desert cart...."

I hope this encourages you in your daily "stuff".