Searching For the Sound of Silence

Trust Like A Funnel

The life of faith is an experiment of trust on two levels.

First, we trust that our identity no longer lies in the burned out homes and crumbling boulevards that comprise our fractured familiarities. We’ve been kidnapped from those places; shattered and mended for an altogether different sort of Kingdom.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:13)

Sometimes trust is difficult. Often the shadows of our past veil our shining eyes and we’re temporarily blinded to the reality that has been set like a burning, eternal lamp before us.

Trust is a deep-seated resolve God pours into us, a tenacity whereby we (while veiled) shrug our shoulders and squint joyously into promise.

Love is a force meant to split our ribs and shock our hearts:

Trembling between the shoulders of familiar roads
Homes burned out, torn down
Drown in the disparaging night,
Like velvet curtains atop the heavy black,
And send my shuffling gaze arching back
Mumbling at heaven’s whispering light
Still light years away, still silent songs for flight
I stumble, skid before finally unveiling knees
To the frozen black river that for so long pulled me under
I am Eustace.
Flat on my back.
Love’s current–a knife between my ribs
Light, speaking, cracking,
Burning through the night.

But faith demands a response aimed at carrying us beyond ourselves.

Reading the book of Acts is an exercise in humility. As my eyes scan the pages I find myself involuntarily asking questions like, “How did something that was apparently so normative for the early church (the disciples selling all their possessions and surrendering them to the needs to the poor) something that would today cause many Christians to consider whether one ought to be hospitalized? Is this really a radical way of living? Perhaps, in the economy of heaven it’s…well…expected?”

Truth is…I’m bored. I wish I could say that my desire to live sacrificially (to trust God with the resources He’s loaned out to me) is primarily rooted in a desire to see the lives of people who need them more than I do impacted for the sake of Jesus. In truth, however, I’m beginning to yawn in the direction of a Christianity that doesn’t really need Jesus, a faith that isn’t really willing to trust, when trust is inconvenient. I’m beginning to see the danger in a “faith” publicized by million dollar words like: faith, hope, and love. Words about spirituality that fail to collide with a genuine praxis are, as Job says, words for the wind (6:26).

I’ve been convicted, and thus, starting to walk in a different direction. Because I believe that Jesus Christ is worthy of our trust…and I’m tired of just talking about Christianity.

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