Recent Musings:
The faith to move a mountain.
Friday, January 20, 2006
So I spent an intense 20 minutes yesterday trying to work through the thoughts from yesterday's post and in the midst of writing, reading my Bible and praying, I was lead to the story of Nicodemus.
And what rang similar to me with the story of Nicodemus is that he, like the disciples, didn't (or couldn't) believe in the Christ that was standing right before them. And Christ says to Nicodemus, "If I'm right here and you can't believe me, how will you believe in the one who sent me?"
Faith and belief and trust are tricky concepts to grasp, because none of them are tangible. Believing something to be true takes a lot more courage and hope than knowing something to be true. I've gotten to a place in my belief structure where I'm comfortable and mostly strong in my faith; I wish I could say the same about my love relationship.
In my love relationship I have a lot of doubt; I lose a lot of hope; I don't always believe that just because my boyfriend says something means that he's sincere about it. (And for the record, this is no fault of my boyfriend!) My doubts are really hard on me and are really hard on our relationship. It's hard because, I've realized now, this IS what you need to keep relationships going. You need to learn to trust the other; you need to have faith that they mean what they say; you need to learn to grasp the big and scary concepts that are not tangible, that you cannot always see or feel and just learn to hope and believe and have faith in the other.
Apparently, I'm not alone in my doubt, for Nicodemus and the disciples and Jesus dealt with it centuries ago. That makes me feel better.
But for now, I will start to look at my love relationship in terms of a belief (although I know they are completely different structures). I will start to apply the same bold and awe-inspiring faith to the lofty concept of love and hope that the rough patches of humanity can be transcended.
I'm just sorry I haven't been able to do it thus far; it would have been a good thing. But we learn when we need to, right? I just hope that too much damage hasn't been done.