Our little faith ...

Wednesday, Jan 15, 2014. Do you have great faith? Perhaps you do. But often, we do not have great faith. Our faith is, indeed, very little. And that has consequences.

Could not heal …

In the gospel of Matthew we are taken into a story about faith. Let us read:

14 And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, 15 said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. 16 And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” 17 And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”

18 And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly.4 19 Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” 20 He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17, 14-20)

There are two parts of this story. One is about little faith. The other is about little faith as well - but the first little faith is not able to heal. In the second part, faith which is as small as the smallest seed is able to carry out anything!

The Mountain will move …

It is fantastic that Jesus does not demand “great faith” from us. He just demands faith which is like the mustard seed. That is one of the smallest seeds. He just demands a little but significant portion of faith.

I have been struggling this morning, to fill this faith in a particular situation. What exactly does it mean. What are steps of faith. What are steps of trust in the Lord in this particular impossible situation?

I believe that it does not need to be betting on something special. It just means to trust the Lord that he will do what is necessary. It just means to trust the Lord that he knows a path we can go. We cannot tell the Lord what to do. We can ask him for this or that. But it might be that he has better solutions, what ever that is and even if we do not recognize the solutions as better. We do not know how the Lord will help, but it is without doubt THAT he will help.

It can be a fight within our heart, to trust the Lord. It can be a fight, not to become negative or bitter. It might be that trust has to be fought for - not externally, but in our own heart.

We can be joyful, since we know a faithful God. We can be joyful since we know: his angels will not stay inactive. We know that he will find a way for us, even if we cannot see how it should look like. We do not need to see around the next corner or behind the next mountain. It is perfectly sufficient to trust him today and move ahead. He has enough possibilities to help. And in this trust, we will also realize how the mountains move, and how healing takes place. We will find that our little faith brings blessing with it, more than we expect. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts