Day 3319 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 77:19 NIV

“Were not seen.”

Seems to be that much of faith is held within the unseen, considered alongside the unknown, captured, enraptured within the uncertain, defined by the all but undefinable. It’s as if there are demands implicitly set against our senses as such things as sight and sound and even a conscience’s considerations are all so limited that when looked to or relied up in regard to faith, they all collectively find themselves all but unreliable at best, utterly restraining at worst.

For His path has always led where we see no reason to be, have no way to assume, cannot possibly understand or otherwise figure out. No, His path is one against the grain of the already known.

Do we follow or shall we fail?

Sadly failure has been a far closer friend than faith throughout our lives. We’ve each found more reason to resist the intrigue of the impossible than we ever have the courage to chance the uncertain. I reckon that such stagnancy is simply to be expected from souls assuming safety found alongside comfort, leaving comfort then the outcome to be preferred. Yes, we’ve long lost life beyond the sights and sounds that seem to seem safe and secure simply because they line up with what we assume from inside a life spent building preferences as opposed to references.

No, we’ve had little need of external reference upon which to rely in order to help us find more than we could be, could see, should be able to hope to be or see. Instead we’ve settled for the safety of the shoreline, accepting the curiosity of wondering what the other side of the sea might look like, just without the audacity to trust the Way to keep parted the waves long enough for us to find out for sure.

It’s one of those saddening outcomes of our shared outlook. If you’ve read along any time at all through all these posts I share, you’ve likely seen one of my attacks upon this idea that seeing is believing. Hate that cliché! Despise it with a growing ferocity as it stifles the curiosity needed to see beyond ourselves as if seeing equates to believing then we can never be anything other than whatever we see. And well, while that might inspire a sense of safety, security, alas it binds us eternally to this land of temporality.

And I for one just cannot stomach any more seconds of these few I’ve remaining being restrained into a life lived thinking that the only things possible in existence are the few and fleeting we’ve the luxury of seeing.

Because is such a vanity truly in any way conducive, constructive to anything, faith most obviously? Or is such a limitation as our reliance upon our senses only to be proven constrictive to the majority of life, of faith, of hope, of healing, of happiness, of humility? Indeed, what can we know of humility when we see enough to assume we know enough to somehow manage to be enough to live enough inside a life without enough that ever seems to fulfill or otherwise provide any measure or molecule or modicum of contentment?

I’ve lived that life for longer than I care to confess. Always looking for something I could see, trusting only the safety of knowing that if I could see it then I could be it, I could have it, I could buy it or try it or take it or test it or taste it and know for certain that I wasn’t at risk of looking or feeling or otherwise seeming a fool to anyone, myself mostly. Because that’s among our greatest fears in life anymore. In fact, I dare say that other than death itself, our fear of looking foolish is arguably our greatest fear.

And thus we suck at faith.

Because in faith seeing only hinders believing. Seeing prevents believing. Seeing asks us to question believing, believers, belief itself. No, see, seeing demands evidence, a sort of indisputable distribution of undeniable understanding that can be both readily repeated as well as widely accepted. Yes, we’re stuck inside a sickening assuming that we can only believe in that which is repetitive and non-repulsive. And well, when we allow such social instances of specific insistence, well then we’re likely to believe in very little if anything at all.

Simply because we live in a world that thinks belief is a child’s game of fantasy and foolishness, fun and frivolity. Definitely nothing that’s the making of maturity as defined by the mundanity of the monetary and material.

That’s exactly why so few do believe in Christ. It’s not than none know of His Name as we all do. It’s not that faith is some extremist’s undertaking, although that’s entirely up for debate at this point. It isn’t that none of us actually believe in absolutely nothing as surely we all believe in something, even if it’s the sort of entitlement that assumes tomorrow’s coming or whatever other blessing we’ve come to take for granted.

No, we all do in fact believe in something. So maybe it’s just our fear of man talking whenever we refuse to talk about our faith. Maybe it’s our hesitancy to seem silly for believing in Christ to those who we should find silly for not believing in that most hopeful outlook possible. Maybe it’s that we’re so afraid of even the challenge of living that we dare not invite the added weight of doing so with a heightened sense of responsibility.

Whatever the case, it’s just sad to be honest. Because I fear that what our fear has us missing most is the fullness of life, of faith, of hope, of love and of every good and perfect gift sent down from God above. Yes, I fear that our fear has us firmly planted upon the shore, always unsure of whether or not to risk the reward of taking that step into the unseen of what we can only ever hope is waiting beyond the horizon.

But the question we seem scared to consider is what can’t we know, what won’t we see, who can’t we be if we don’t try to believe? What of life, of love, of hope, of home won’t we find if we’ve not the faith to look beyond the little we can really only assume we know of any of the above? What life will we fail to find, never be able to live if we only live within the safety of sight and assumption?

Yes, what steps will be left untaken, leaving then opportunities unknown, if we take no risk of seeming silly or inviting uncertainty?

This sort of pondering has been experienced by many throughout history. It was forced into a quick decision by a horde fleeing slavery in Egypt only to arrive at the Red Sea and see no way out. It was felt by those were called to walk around a city called Jericho for a week waiting for the walls to just fall down. It was found by a man named Peter as he looked into the eyes of this fellow named Jesus who asked him to step out of the boat onto water, seemed sane I would assume.

Yes, that same Jesus kept asking this sort of faith in the form of roosters and stones and tombs and even some bread and a couple of fish. He always seems to ask us to trust in the impossible, to take that step onto the path that we can’t quite seem to see a way of working out. Like a few fish and some scraps of bread feeding thousands, water being able to satisfy the guests still getting their party on and assuming the best was still to come for their wine-craved taste buds, or more water holding up under Peter’s feet as if a foundation made for walking. He does a lot with water, on water, near water.

And oh yeah, there’s been a couple of dead folks brought back to life.

But perhaps none of that is even the hardest part for us to believe. No, maybe the hard part is that part of this path that asks us to take that step. Might be out of the boat onto what we know isn’t able to hold us safely. Might be for us to share the little we have, knowing well it can’t possibly help or heal or satisfy or satiate anyone. Might be for us to do the same thing over and over again with the audacity of expecting the wall to fall down and reward our diligence.

Or, and one that’ll trip us all up for sure, it might be to simply follow the path that still leads where we’ve always known His path to go.

I honestly think that that’s the biggest reason so many choose doubt over belief. It’s because we know what’s to be found along this path. We know where it goes, what it needs, what it brings, what we’ll lose. Yes, Christ came to this earth to walk for us an example that would lay out perfectly clear what we might feel free to expect should we follow along and go for this ride.

And what do we see of His path? Because yes, it is the one that led those people into the sea on dry ground. It’s the one that proved water an unbreakable foundation fit for walking. It’s the same which called folks such a Lazarus out of the grave back into this land of the living. It’s the same that carried the cross and held the weight of our wrongs and gave a final breath with the truth spoken in that we know not what we’re doing.

So we know what this path means because we’ve read all about the lives and experiences of those who walked it before us.

We know that just in our Savior is seen a time spent trudging through torrents of trial and torment. We know that Christ walked a path paved with persecution and pain. We’re well aware that we wore a crown of thorns as spikes were driven into His hands and feet, as if they were needed to keep Him where He’d chosen to be. We know of the tomb that dared think it could hold Him. We know of the cloths left lying without a job to do anymore as He wasn’t all that interested in remaining what the world insisted.

No, we know well what this path means and I think we can maybe see more of His footsteps than we let ourselves believe.

Indeed, makes you wonder at why then the claims of the unseen, the uncertain inside this faith. Can we truly not see His footsteps nor where they lead? Or rather do we not see His footsteps for where they lead?

For again, we know well where they lead, where He led, that where He led and leads is the same as where He bled and perhaps we bleed. Yes, His path was pointed at death, the same impossibility as the sea which stood as the barricade meant to be broken all those generations before. And it’s the same for a reason which stands still for us today.

That be it a sea or a grave, nothing will stand in His way of His will being done.

No, He breaks down the barrier of our belief's disbelief. He rips to shreds our hesitancy and haughtiness so that we might know something of hope, of healing, of meaning. He parts waters so that others may pass through, or He binds them together so that some might walk where they shouldn’t have the ability to tread. He shatters our assumptions by leading us to the death of us so that inside such an outcome we can see that it’s not the outcome we’d otherwise assumed.

That death isn’t the end of life but instead the only place we can find life beyond what this world has convinced us life is supposed to look like, feel like, sound like, stay like.

Yes, be it the Red Sea or Golgotha Hill, seems veils are meant to be torn so that the blind may see, so that we may see through our blindness to the belief that seeks His footsteps more fervently than even our very breath as to breathe means less than to be where He gave us the hope to go. For that is the true path of His footsteps. It’s into the unknown knowing that we don’t need to know anything so long as He says it’s good. It’s aimed into the loss of anything, eagerly, knowing that whatever we may lose will be replaced with something infinitely better in the end.

Indeed, His path hastens to the end so that the beginning which awaits us at the end of us might begin in us a strange curiosity that demands a courage that chases every opportunity we’re given to follow Him through this land we’re leaving.

That’s His path. It’s leaving. Leaving behind slavery, hesitancy, depravity, dishonesty, immorality, stagnancy, complacency, the monotony of lives lived in love with mammon and materiality. His path asks us to leave behind pretty much all of life and what we’ve made of it, because of what we’ve made of it. Because this way of life we’ve settled for living, it’s not much of a living.

In fact, it’s just not life.

No, truth is that for so long we’ve settled for simply existing because a life worth living is found only inside those footsteps we can’t see, won’t see, don’t want to see. Whatever the case may be, if we want to find life, we’ve got to follow the Way that is the Life. And while His way may lead away from the comfort and contentment we’ve come to consider acceptable, what if we allowed ourselves to focus instead on what He might show us rather than what we expect to see?

What if we worried more about the excitement of not needing our eyes to say it’s safe to go wherever He asks us to go? What if we didn’t worry quite so much about making sure we see the path before we just take it, trusting Him to have paved it in the way in which it should go? What if we just picked up our feet and trusted Him to make sure that they land in the footsteps He left for us to follow?

That is the gift of this week. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, it’s all a path asking us to trust Him and simply follow into the fire and flame and pain and to do so just leaning on His Name rather than our normal insistence upon seeing a reason that seems safe enough for us to know we’ve nothing to risk. Because as that empty tomb we celebrate this weekend should teach us, what do we have to risk when not even death can stop what He’s decided to do?

Friends, may we find a faith, or rather allow His faithfulness to find for us the courage to expect the impossible knowing that He isn’t limited by what our senses assume plausible. Because honestly, anything less than the impossible is simply too safe. And well, He died for more than our knowing a safe and easy life. No, He gave His life that we might have ours to the full, and a full life demands a full faith.

Chase that full faith, not merely to the water’s edge but to the other of that sea knowing that if that’s where He’s called us to be, He will make a way. Because He always has, has He not? And so maybe we’ve managed to get this whole seeing is believing thing a bit backwards too.

Yes, seems to me a little more exciting to think about what all we might see if we just believed. Maybe His footprints, for instance.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold