There are lots of new electronic gadgets on the market, and it seems that children are the first to master them. Some time back I clipped a Dennis the Menace cartoon showing Mr. Wilson with a big smile on his face holding the door open for Dennis to come into his house. Mrs. Wilson could hardly believe what she was seeing, so she asked, "George, do you mean you're glad to see Dennis?" "of course", he answered, "he's over here to program the VCR." A mom tells of listening to her five-year-old son as he played with his Speak-and-Spell computer. At one point he typed in the word “God” and waited for the computer to say it back to him. To his surprise, the computer said, “Word not found.” He tried again and the computer repeated, “Word not
Found.” The mom reports that little son glared at the computer and announced, “Jesus is not going to like this!”
Just as there are machines that don't have God in their vocabulary, so there are also people who don’t have faith in their lives. I’ve characterized faith as a journey, but that doesn’t really capture the meaning of faith. Perhaps it is a concept, that like a fine diamond, must be looked at from many angles. So, on this 12th Sunday in the season of Pentecost, this time when the Church focuses on our personal spiritual growth, I want us to take another look at our faith.
A mother tells a story about her three-year-old fiddling with a toy trumpet as she watched television. The program featured a skilled musician who played a fabulous trumpet solo. The little girl listened intently to the whole song, held up her own trumpet, and announced, “Mine doesn’t have that kind of music in it.”
And we can relate to that. When we compare our own faith journey to that of some of the heroes of the Bible, we are like that little girl who compared her meager efforts on a toy trumpet with those of a professional musician on a real trumpet. We felt pretty self-satisfied until we heard what real music sounds like. So we come to Hebrews 11 with open hearts. And we read these words inspired by God, “Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen . . .” O. K., we can live with that—”the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen . . .” But it’s a little abstract. So we turn to the writer of Hebrews and ask, “Could you be more specific? Could you give us an example?” And he does. Among others, he gives us the example of Abraham. By taking another look at the faith of Abraham, can we be inspired to look at our own? More importantly, will we be moved from where we are to a more vibrant and fulfilling faith?
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