Tuesday, 11 March, 2003

From the last section of Thomas Oden's book The Justification Reader



God is not a visible object of sense. But by grace believers are made inwardly certain of what they cannot see or quantify empirically.

Faith is distinguished from sight on the one hand, and doubt on the other. Believers walk by faith, which is distinguishable from both empirically certain sight and spiritually uncertain doubt. "We live by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith "sees" that which is mostly concealed from the sensory apparatus. It is "a trust in the unseen as though it were seen, in that which is hoped and waited for as if it were present.

Some outcomes of God's promise will always remain partially obscure until the end . Nonetheless, faith relies on the trustworthiness of God's providential love for the right ultimate unfolding of these outcomes.



"Trust in the unseen as though it were seen, in that which is hoped and waited for as if it were present." We trust in a promise. We have faith in that which we are assured will be the end of all things...and therefore the beginning of all things today and every day. The one who makes those assurances is the the God who is the creator of all things and the one who raised Jesus from the dead. I'm sure we all have many things within our lives that we like to trust. And for the most part, it is well placed trust. Trusting that our partner will be faithful has an impact on who I am and how I go about living right now. Trusting that our parents will provide for and protect us as we was grow up shapes how we grow up and how we interact with our world. How much more is our life shaped when we are told that the end of the stories of our lives are secure in God's loving hands...no doubt about it! And yet, we all choose to trust the security of what is concrete and visible and touchable over that which is promised and not visible completely. God invites us to take the leap and see how life is when we are moved to see the promises of God unfolding within our lives to make all things new.



Connection: Trusting in our God and what God does through the liberating presence of Jesus, how is our seeing changed? How are the perceptions of the day altered? What difference does it make for us when we look at our world through the lens of God's saving promise?



Lord of the Present and the Not Yet, we await your loving presence within each of our days. You have given us the gift of life and you bid us to walk forward into what is not yet known completely, trusting that you will indeed be the source of our strength and courage. Praise to you blessed Lord. Amen.