With the rain chasing off the last of the lawnmowers and screaming preschoolers, the outdoors (as I know them from outside my office) have come down in volume substantially. So in the pseudo-silence/white noise of the rain I have become a little more introspective and thus prone to thinking.I am reading this book entitled Credo which is a compilation of wisdom and writing by one of the giants of recent American pastors, William Sloane Coffin (Click here to learn more about Coffin). Coffin writes...
"I love the recklessness of faith.
First you leap, then you grow wings."
First you leap, then you grow wings."
The other day I saw the movie Earth. This Disney production spends most of its time showing the beauty and the harshness of the world that we live in. In one "cute" scene baby ducks, prompted by their mother, must leap from the hole in the tree where they have spent the first month or so of their lives to a ground covered in leaf-litter. The drop for this duck family looked to be about 2 stories up. As I write this I am about 2 stories from the ground and no matter how much prompting my Mom would give me (unless the building is on fire) I am not jumping. I don't think I am going to die, but I am not sure I am going to walk again...I don't trust that I will land safely and unlike the ducks I am not hard-wired to fly which would make jumping a whole lot easier. The reality is that I am not supposed to jump, nothing in my nature compels me and nothing in my culture reinforces me to take that leap. I think these same factors are what make that Leap of Faith so very difficult and counter-cultural for humanity.
The belief in the Love and the Grace of God requires people to trust. Trust that their faith and the life that they will pursue in accordance to that faith is not just some seventy-ought years chasing a fairy tale. In other words, the leap that we take in faith, in order to survive must be equipped by wings and a flock to fly with. Yet in what Coffin calls the "recklessness" of our faith, wings only come after your are no longer touching the ground which are the safe confines of our culture and our nature. We must become airborne, prone to falling, under no power of our own, before we become equipped and empowered to stay up and even fly higher. Such is the way with God, that each is equipped for the journey of faith and life only once the journey has begun.
Something to think about for this rainy day...
The belief in the Love and the Grace of God requires people to trust. Trust that their faith and the life that they will pursue in accordance to that faith is not just some seventy-ought years chasing a fairy tale. In other words, the leap that we take in faith, in order to survive must be equipped by wings and a flock to fly with. Yet in what Coffin calls the "recklessness" of our faith, wings only come after your are no longer touching the ground which are the safe confines of our culture and our nature. We must become airborne, prone to falling, under no power of our own, before we become equipped and empowered to stay up and even fly higher. Such is the way with God, that each is equipped for the journey of faith and life only once the journey has begun.
Something to think about for this rainy day...
1 comment:
My three year old would jump out of a second story window, no problem. No urging required. This is not just a theory. He has almost fallen out of second story windows twice, over a third floor balcony railing at the Holiday Inn, and just last week, over a theater balcony railing.
Faith is easier for children, too. Whatever the reason, maybe it's the same.
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