**Reflection delivered on our Monday Morning Devotion: June 18, 2009**
As every journey begins with a first step, I wonder which direction should each journey go? Do we usually choose a road less-traveled by or the one taken by the many? Do we choose to travel alone or do we go along with others? Do we usually make our first step using our right foot? Or is the left over the right?
Did we ever think first of where we are going before deciding which step to make? Is it not then that “Every journey, therefore, begins with choosing where to go”? If so, consider our being believers, as journeying Christians, “Where are we going?”
And if we have made such choice of where we are to go, is it the one made because of our faith?
In the book of Genesis, God has promised Abraham that his nation “shall be great and his land shall be as wide as he can see”. In his faithfulness, Abraham did everything what God has asked him to do-- to leave Ur for a difficult journey to a land unknown. In the same way, Sarah was promised to conceive “children as many as the stars” even when she was too old to have one, and she was given Isaac.
Yet, we know that Abraham and Sarah did not live to see, all that God has promised to them. God has fulfilled his promises in later time and we know now, that Abraham is considered to be the great ancestor of Jews and Christians, and Moslems-- all now too many as the stars. Perhaps, Abraham and Sarah knew just so and viewed these promises from afar. But did their faith journey end in their grave? Does our faith journey end when we die?
I remember a “free verse” in a college literary folio that has striking parallelism of the verses about our faithful journeys in the song “Find us Faithful” -- though, obviously they maybe of different causes:
The verse read:
“Sa bawat sandatang nalalaglag
May mas mapuppulang dugo
Ang syang susukbit sa kampilang iniwan”
It has strikingly similar message to this verse:
“May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful”
Both verses affirm that one’s faith journey is not one taken to have an end. As long as there are the faithful followers, “silang may mas mapupulang dugo”, who follow a certain vision and faith, each journey like traveling along the sides of Mobius strip where there seems to be two sides, yet we infinitely travel in one. And as long as those who will find us faithful, our faith and our vision will not die.
Like all journeys, our faith experience does not always trod in easy open roads. Most of the time there are rocks, stones and mud along the way. And sometimes, we may end up confused with what we believe, loosen and even loosing our faith.
In the movie “The Promise”, one of the protagonists tells a story of a very religious village who suffered a long period drought that brought about hunger, poverty and death. The villagers, as a community of the faithful went to the Church to pray for rain. They endured all the hunger and prayed for weeks…then came months…until one day, just about almost a year of drought, they went out of the church after attending worship…then it rained.
The story may sound, so naïve and conventional. But here’s the twist. They all prayed for rain and none of them brought an umbrella. You see, when we have to pray for rain, and put our faith that God will give us rain, let us just be faithful to bring an umbrella in case it rains. In fact, many of the villagers forgot that they were actually praying for rain and ran back for cover. None came back to the church.
Most of the time, problems and troubles cause us to let go of what we believe and seek relative understandings that temporarily soothe the pains that we suffer. For some, loosing faith might just be the right choice. But do we ever loose our faith?
If we did, loose our faith, would God abandon us?
And if you did believe that he abandons us, you should listen very intently to what is God is trying to say in this song by Leona Lewis (click the image to view)
My friends, believe that God will carry you.
