We have our own daily chores to attend to, worries to address, and dreams to nurse, just as the biblical fellows had. We have the belief in God as they had, yet now and then we face the usual doubts and discouragement that encounter all believers (as the Israelites, too, had). The surprising thing is that a few centuries from today, the people of that time may use our experience to re-evaluate their relationship with God and to set new resolutions on how to relate to him better- when ourselves do not see anything special in our time.
This realization made me to look at faith in a new dimension. The catechism of the Catholic Church says that faith is a grace from God (ccc140), yet now we are also seeing that faith has a historical aspect. It does not come suddenly to a person. It is not a blind adhesion to a truth that transcends us, or to a mystery that is inaccessible. It is an adhesion to an ascertainment obtained from a deep reading of person’s history which goes beyond the immediate visible order, in order to grasp a presence that gives meaning to it.
To be honest, a person’s history is the most convincing proof of the presence of God, not of a neutral God equal for all, but a God who address each person by name as an individual. When we are able to read the finger of God in our own lives, regardless of what we have passed through, then in them we see all the elements of the history of salvation: election, trial, fall, slavery, struggle and liberation. It is only through this kind of reading of faith in each person’s history that stabilizes our faith. It is also the only way of identifying our lives with the salvific events given in the bible through the history of the Israelites.
It is worth noting however that the most important thing is not the reviewing of the past history of faith, but the capacity to use that faith drawn from one’s identifying of God’s finger in his life, to face every situation of the life today with certainty that God is ever present and faithful, no matter what happens to us. This involves investing in the rich inheritance of faith with all the risk involved. This is where faith becomes a day to day affair and not just an instrument of tackling hard, difficult and threatening situations. When this kind of understanding is reached, faith is projectable to the future, becoming a means to approach the unknown future. In other words, at this level, faith turns into an inspiring hope.
With the world gradually turning a blind eye to religious and spiritual matters, this kind of exercise is not easy. This explains why we easily dismiss those people who try to give a spiritual dimension to the events that take place in our society. We seem to be slowly turning into empiricists day after day, for whom everything must be explainable scientifically, otherwise it is labeled as superstitious. The challenge to us today is, therefore, to discover the God who manifested himself in our past history, a God who gives meaning to our present regardless of what we might be enduring, and yes, a God who offers new ways of looking at the future with hope. Let us re-look our lives today, for God is certainly doing a great thing in our absent-mindedness.
