Faith & Trust
He who would thus live must, as a mirror draws into its bosom an outward glory, receive into his ‘heart of heart’ the inward glory of Jesus Christ, the Truth.
So long as there is in us the least taint of distrust, the least lingering of hate or fear, we have not received the sonship.
Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits, content in ignorance as in knowledge, because God wills; neither pressing into the hidden future, nor careless of the knowledge which opens the path of action.
The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity.
Let us then dare something. Let us not always be unbelieving children.
What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter!
He is utterly true and good to us, nor shall anything withstand his will.
Every uplifting of the heart is a looking up to The Father.
The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, and which he does not feel, does not even always desire; believes in a power that seems far from him, which is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest—rest as far from death as is labour.
Our mirroring of Christ, then, is one with the presence of his spirit in us.
The only free man, then, is he who is a child of the Father.
The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child—good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith.
Graciousness and truth are around, above, beneath us, yea, in us.
If there be a God, and I am his creature, there may be, there should be, there must be some communication open between him and me.
The idea, you see, is not the reflection, the radiating of the light of Christ on others, though that were a figure lawful enough; but the taking into, and having in us, him working to the changing of us.
He is a servant of all, but can be made the slave of none: he is a son of the lord of the universe.
When we are least worthy, then, most tempted, hardest, unkindest, let us yet commend our spirits into his hands.
So are we sons when we begin to cry Father, but we are far from perfected sons.
I care not to be told that one may pass at once into all possible sweetness of assurance; it is not assurance I desire, but the thing itself; not the certainty of eternal life, but eternal life.
MannaScroll