John Claypool once observed that the Bible is written in the language of people and events.
The Bible speaks of faith in a wide variety of ways – narrative, poetry, song, parables, correspondence, prophecy, wisdom sayings, pithy stories, comedy, tragedy and fairy tale (myth), proclamation and preaching. And the list could go on.
Most of us have been raised to think there is only one faith, only one way of believing, only one way of living the faith life.
I suppose in some pedantic way that may be true. Yet, when it comes to living the faith, to accepting the challenge of making faith three-dimensional in our lives, it’s also true that faith is like a cloud that hangs suspended above us floating at the whimsy of an unseen wind.
While sitting outdoors reading a book one day, I decided to stretch my neck and rest my thoughts by looking up at the sky. I looked up at the clouds scattered across the sky and noticed they weren’t all in motion to the same degree as others around them.
No one cloud was like any of the others around it. There were similarities to be sure, but every cloud was distinctly its own being, separate and apart from any of the others.
One was headed in one direction and just below it, another skirted underneath headed in a slightly different direction. It looked for a moment that there would be a collision but what would it matter? They were clouds, not cars!
Around the fringes of each cloud, I could see how they were constantly disappearing and reappearing. I suppose if I could have seen the entire cloud clearly, I would have noticed the entirety of the cloud was simultaneously melting and morphing.
That experience, and the movement I observed, offers insight into what faith is and what it looks like in the lived experience of daily life.
Faith, like the clouds carried aloft above us, is dynamic and alive. It’s wispy and ever-changing.
Faith is growing and failing all in the same moment. You can be headed in different directions at times while also recognizing that you are being carried aloft by a power beyond yourself.
This brief poem encapsulates what I’m suggesting about faith and the divine:
All is gift,
the air I breathe,
the wind through the trees,
the breath of God
breathes in them and in me.
I breathe the air that
Jesus breathed.
I feel the wind that Mary felt.
Every breath a thanks,
every breeze a praise.
No matter what you use as a metaphor to say the unsayable, know that God is in it all with you. God is a part of your thinking and a part of your being.
God is with you in the doing of faith, whether you’re succeeding in the moment or failing.
Aauthor of Living a Narrative Life, Exploring the Power of Stories (Smyth & Helwys, 2019).
