Faith Matters

It’s hard for me to grasp anything unless someone tells me the bigger picture and connects the dots. Take math, for instance. My easiest math class was the first semester of geometry when the logic for the Pythagorean theorem made a whole lot more sense than the very abstract math of calculus. No one ever explained to me the real world application of calculus, and I was blindly plugging and chugging my way through equations without much of an idea of where it was all going. 

When the bigger picture is absent, I’m admittedly struggling. I realize when I teach my students I’m trying to always give them the bigger picture. Try telling college students how relative clauses matter in the grand scheme of their future careers. It’s a stretch, I know. 

Ultimately, whether or not students get the bigger picture or not, it’s about them trusting that as their teacher, I’m going to get them there. Sometimes I find that they don’t need the rationale as long as they know that I have their best in mind. 

I’m not always as trusting as my students when it comes to how I view God. I know THE bigger picture - that the kingdom of God will one day be fully established, but I struggle with the living that happens in between. I need glimpses of where this is all headed. But that’s exactly where faith resides - in the not knowing. And sometimes when God graces me with the hindsight of connecting the dots of past decisions made in faith, I am awestruck by their reverberations into the present. Let’s not discount the faith needed for today as we welcome the bigger picture from afar.