Years ago I asked my students to explain what they thought faith was.
It didn't take long before it became obvious that they were in over their heads. A few of them, misunderstanding the topic, explained what they believed. A couple talked about coming to faith. Mostly, though, they gave good examples of empericism and the scientific method at work.
I've known a few adults who don't understand faith either. They hold a name it and claim it theology that says if you just believe something hard enough, and don't admit to any doubt, miracles will happen. That's a cruel kind of faith, because whe we try to be stupider than we are, we usually succeed. People with this kind of faith often are the sort tell everyone that their cancer has been healed, and will find ways to ignore the growing mass right up to the moment the undertaker comes for them and the whisper campaign begins that their faith wasn't good enough.
"Faith," Priscilla tells us, " is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It's not rooted in empirical evidence, but it doesn't fly in the face of it either. It rests in our ability to imagine an invisible word. We can't point to justice, or measure the weight of love. No one has heard trust jump into a pile of autumn leaves, or sat with friendship in the garden sipping lemonade and listening to the bananaquits. Like God, none of those things is real enough for that.
But as many of us do with God, we place our faith in those things and allow them to shape our lives with meaning.
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