7 December 2016

Genesis 15:4-6

Christmas movies are back, and perhaps you recall or have recently seen the classic, “Miracle on 34th Street.”  In that movie, a little girl named Susan does not at first believe in Santa (Kris Kringle) but is told by her mother, “Faith is believing something when common sense tells you not to.”   “But that doesn’t make any sense!” Susan cries.  Yet she wills herself to believe in kind Mr. Kringle, and a miracle occurs!

In life there are few clear cases of good and bad:  each person, marriage, career, or era of history is a combination of strength and weakness, win and lose, kindness and cruelty.   After a few disappointments or defeats, it can be easy to lose faith when “facts” or history tell us that better days are unlikely. We say this is common sense, and it tells us not to believe.

Common sense is good for many things, and none of us should overlook objective reality by becoming delusional.  The world has dangers which we need to handle wisely (see Proverbs). So the key to faith is not to believe everything and everyone, but to ground our faith in God’s word, his teachings, and his answers to prayer. Sometimes we’ll be led towards caution, and other times towards “stepping out in faith.” But if we listen carefully for God’s voice, more than any human voice (even our own), we can have confidence that our faith is well placed.

In Genesis, God himself tells Abraham that he and his elderly wife Sarah will have a child and create a dynasty of descendants as numerous as the stars. Because of their advanced age, it might have been “common sense” not to believe this prophecy, but Abraham trusted God absolutely. He believed God’s word even when common sense told him not to… and for his faith, God credited Abraham as righteous, and rewarded him.