Faith is Embracing a Relational Story
“God meets us in the mess,” I said. “But how do you know that, Dad?” my son asked. Adding, you can’t prove it. I didn’t answer right away. Later I suggested there are more ways of knowing something. Knowing God is a relational knowing, an experience of love like our relationship with one another. That’s faith, embracing a relational story with God.
The author of Hebrews is helping his readers embrace their relational story with God. When we do, it shapes our history, draws us to the future, and inspires us in the present.
Faith shapes our history
People like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Moses, and Rahab have shown what embracing a relational story with God is (Heb. 11). It’s the intersection of God’s story and the human story. This has occurred inclusively for all of humanity in the person of Christ; it also happens more quietly for each of us.
When I consider my story in broad strokes, it has different themes for each decade. My teens were spent pursuing and often achieving success but wondering if there was something more. It was in that quiet wonder that I chose faith in Christ. My twenties were about me building a life. I thought I would pursue ministry out of college but felt God led me to take a corporate sales job. I married, began a family, and then thought God called me to become a pastor. So off I went. My thirties can best be described as ambition meets limitation. I had profound experiences of brokenness as my mother died, my marriage failed, and my ministry at church was in chaos. Amidst this season of pain, I also learned about God’s faithfulness, providing grace and new mornings when it often felt they would not come. So far, my forties has been predominantly a season of resurrection as I find myself experiencing restoration in my family, ministry, and career.
That’s how faith shapes my story. How does embracing a relational story with God shape yours?
Faith draws us to the future
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them…But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. (Hebrews 11:13,16)
I recently brought my daughter to her first year at the University of Vermont. While driving up route seven in Vermont, you get a great view of the Adirondacks–from a distance. This is ironic because I also drove through the Adirondacks to get there, but you can’t really see any of it then. On the other hand, when you are on the top of Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks, you experience it fully. I think this is what the author of Hebrews is getting at when he says people of faith didn’t fully receive the promises, but from a distance, they saw and greeted them. Faith draws us to the future because while we experience God now, it is not as fully as we will one day.
Otis Redding is one of my favorite artists. I wish I could have seen him live. What I especially appreciate about how he sings is that his words are almost on the front edge of the beat. This creates movement and a push to his songs which is quite fantastic. Similarly, faith gives our life and story a movement towards the future restoration revealed in Jesus.
Faith inspires our present
…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…(Heb. 12:1-2)
God’s faithfulness to us empowers our faithfulness to the present. What does that look like? I think Fred Buechner gets at it in The Remarkable Ordinary when he writes,
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
In our relational story with God, we can find grace in the beauty of a landscape, the fullness of a moment as we drop our child off at college, or the magic of leaves that shimmer in the breeze. These moments, whether in the midst of pain or joy, are moments in which we experience the mystery of God’s ministry to us.
To notice these will require us to pay attention. Like me, you probably find yourself paying attention to many other things and often miss the present. Ask yourself, “Am I embracing my relational story with God?” Don’t worry; God is faithful and continues to be faithful, so you can embrace the present right now, tomorrow, or more likely, a little bit now and then.
