a firkin of faith

This is not a full treatise on faith by any means, but I have to say I have been thinking about stewardship and faith lately.  I started thinking about this in response to my friend troy’s blogpost . I have already told him I don’t agree simply with the implication that we need to work harder.  I cannot work any harder or I will become sick and perhaps die.  I’m not exaggerating.  But I don’t think he is talking about people like me or like David in that blog.  He is talking about folks who don’t work hard and with that I agree.  This thought was combined in my head with a quote from the Little Prince which I have to teach/read every year.  In it , the fox explains that it requires effort to make friends and since there is no store that sells ready-made friends, folks don’t have any anymore.  This thought compared with listening/reading any news; I’m sure you’ve seen it too.  You’d have to have your head in the sand not to notice the mess the U.S., and consequently the rest of the world is in economically.  So much of this economic mess stems from folks defaulting on mortgages.  They have more house than they can afford, so they walk away from it.  Even us, when we were looking for this house, we had decided we could spend 100,000$ (not the actual figure) without putting ourselves in danger and even that was the absolute outside limit.  The bank said they would do a loan for something like nearly twice that.  I mean, that is crazy!!  If we had actually gone with that, sure we could have had a fantastic house for twice the money, but there is no hope we could ever had paid on principle at all.  We would have been joining the queue of folks declaring bankruptcy.  I am totally not talking about the folks who have other money/bankruptcy problems through no fault of their own (you know who you are!)  I’m talking about people who want more than they could/should have and they don’t want to work for it; they want it “magically” through the “generosity” of banks and lending institutions.  Granted I am WELL AWARE that my grasp of the current economic situation and the rash of foreclosures is woefully inadequate.  But that’s what I have understood of it.

I guess what all this adds up to in this fevered brain of mine is that 1) life requires effort.  Effort in every single aspect of life from making friends to making money to work to trying to be happy.  Yes, even being happy requires a conscious effort.  If you don’t make an effort to be happy, you’ll probably be grumpy.  So often, we just want things to come to us with no effort on our part.  We even have the idea around this continent that we “ought” to be happy – it’s like a right or something.  2) Life requires faith.  Faith in a sovereign God that knows the plans He has for us to prosper us and not to harm us.  Even if the “prosper” is in the coming kingdom and not this earth, we simply have to have faith that all this effort will be worth it.  David and I don’t know if our church’s congregation will approve the budget for this coming year.  If they don’t, David could very well be out of a job.  Although I appreciate that economic times are tough, they/we have to have faith that the LORD will meet the needs: their personal needs which will enable them to contribute to the overall church need, and also our needs as we try to determine whether, as of 1 January, he will be unemployed.  However, this is a circular argument of a sort:  having faith requires making an effort on all our part to act on the faith.  Making the effort requires having the faith that there will be a “reward.”  The more difficult the times become, the more difficult it is to have faith, but also, paradoxically, the more difficult the times become, the more difficult it is to make the effort because we all become paralysed in anxiety.

My thot is not even worthy of being dignified with the U, however, it does bother me a bit that a Christian community would assume they have to cut something (possibly) because the money will never be there.  At the same time, we are frail, feeble human merelybeings.  I would be astonished if their/our faith were stronger.  After all, have I mentioned it requires effort?

This blog posting does not require emergency phone calls or anxious comments from parents (remembering of course, that the whole world can read those comments).  I have said all I know.  We are not worried.  We may be on-beyond tired in this house, but we have just enough energy to make the effort to have a wee firkin of faith.   SDG!!