Life is starting to get back to “normal” (whatever normal is?). School starts back tomorrow and the wanderings of the summer are coming back home. Hopefully that means a little more time to blog again, as I’ve only managed about once a week for a little while.
My musing for today is about faith. Our sermon in church this morning was about mercy (and it was a great sermon), but sometimes God shows me something else through His word…stuff I wasn’t even looking for. So in addition to hearing about mercy this morning, God gave me a quick lesson on faith (and my lack of it).
The “revelation” came in the form of one of Jesus’ stories. This one is found in Matthew 17:14-20. It’s the story of a father with a boy who is demon possessed. The dad takes the boy to the disciple to have them cast out the demon…but they can’t do it. So the father appeals to a higher power …Jesus (and rats out the disciples in the process).
Frustrated, Jesus has the boy brought to Him and in about half a second casts the demon out…BAM! Just like that…nothing to it. So the disciples ask Jesus the obvious question (I’m sure they waited for a little private moment to spare themselves the embarrassment): “Jesus, why couldn’t we cast out the demon?”
And the answer Jesus gives is as piercing to me today as I’m sure it was to the disciples 2,000 years ago:
“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them.
“I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed,
you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move.
Nothing would be impossible.”
What a smack in the face! Jesus tells us it doesn’t take much faith…just a mustard seed amount (and that’s small) and you can move mountains. Apparently the disciples didn’t even have that much…they couldn’t cast out a demon much less move an entire mountain.
Can’t say that I fare much better on most days. But it’s quite a thought to think we have this kind of spiritual power at our finger tips. And all it takes is a little faith in the God of the Universe…who happens to care about us and wants our very best. Just need to have little faith and “nothing would be impossible”. Wow.
