Hammer Advice--August 30, 2021
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." [Hebrews 11:1]
So, let's imagine you're hanging a piece of artwork in a big heavy frame, or a mirror, or something like that, on your living room wall. What holds it up? What keeps the painting or the silvered glass from falling down and breaking?
I guess one answer could be the nail that you use to hang it--but that is really only a partial answer at best. Yes, you probably hammer a nail into the wall to hang the frame onto, but the placement of the nail determines whether it will stay up or not. Pound just into the crumbly dry wall of your living room, and it won't bear much weight--the object could just rip out of the wall and come down landing with a crash (maybe when you've just gone to bed for the night so it wakes you up and scares the willies out of you, too!). But if you make sure you are getting the nail into a stud behind the dry-wall, your painting will stay up securely on the wall practically forever.
Same nail, either way--but the difference is what it is anchored into.
I want to suggest that something like this is the real catch when talking about faith. Faith is an awful lot like a nail--it is a tool of holding onto something you can't see. Now, whether you can hang your life on that faith depends a great deal on what the "something" is that your faith is fastened to. Some things look sturdy, but turn out to be as chalky as dry wall; they won't hold much weight at all. But place your faith, however seemingly small it might be, into the reliable character of God, and it turns out that God will hold you.
Faith, in other words, is less matter of how tightly we are holding with our sweaty little grip, and much more about whether we are secured in God rather than in something else that will let us down in the end. And, to be sure, because the God in whom we are dared to place our trust exists beyond our senses, it can feel like a risk to place our trust in God. Like the writer of Hebrews says here, we are talking about the conviction of "things not seen." You might knock on the wall with your ear pressed against it to listen for where the support beams are, or you might get out your trusty stud-finder, but it's still something of a gamble to set your nail where you believe a stud will be. And yeah, trust in God is a lot like that--it can sometimes feel like stepping out into thin air, or taking a leap into the darkness and expecting to be caught.
Until you actually take the step of putting the hammer to the nail's head and start to sink it, you'll be left wondering, "Is there going to be something solid to hold this nail and bear the weight I intend to set on it?" Until you actually feel the nail catching as it digs into the lumber behind the finished wall, it seems reckless to try. But in a sense, all of us are hanging things on the walls of our lives--you can't live in this world without having a certain amount of trust placed in something. The trouble is so many of us place our trust in so many untrustworthy places.
It's the market and its promises of a nest-egg for your retirement, or the assurance of the Dow Jones that your investments will do nothing but grow. It's the myths we tell ourselves about how to have a happy and successful life--which so often let us down abruptly. It's the cult of personality around a politician, or the polished agenda of a party, which all turn out to be disappointments at some point or another. It's the grandiose talk of the "American Dream," and the related notion that you can win yourself some happiness in life by buying the next big thing or acquiring the next great status symbol. All of those look solid, but they prove unreliable, like hammering a nail into chalk and expecting it to hold.
But the God who stands behind and underneath everything else in the world turns out to be worthy of our trust. We can live securely anchored in God, and a faith rooted in God will bear an awful lot of weight. Again, it's not about how strong or great my faith is--it's about whether the One in whom I trust is strong enough to hold me.
That's part of why the Bible can have such expressions of faith as Thomas, skeptically insisting he needs to see the scars of the risen Jesus... or the father who says to Jesus, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" or the angry grief of Mary and Martha, who are upset at Jesus for not showing up to heal their sick brother, only to find Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. God can work with our wobbly faith, because it's not really about our grip on God, but about God's ability to hold onto us.
And this also gives us a really crucial framing for how we talk about "faith" and "fear." In the era of COVID, it's really tempting for religious folks to turn "faith" and "fear" into opposites in the sense of saying, "If you're worried about getting COVID, or concerned about passing it along to a sick adult or an unvaccinated child or neighbor, you must not really believe in God." Sometimes, "Don't be afraid--just have faith" is abused to sound like being reckless or inconsiderate of our neighbors is an indicator of our belief in eternal life (and yes, some actual governors of states have said as much in recent days). Look--if the choice is between "fear" and "faith," of course people want to see themselves on the side of "faith." The trouble is that faith in something that isn't worthy of your trust is going to put a hole in your wall and a broken mirror on your floor before long. Putting your faith in something or someone who is not reliable isn't a good exercise of faith, much like hammering a nail into Styrofoam or fiberglass insulation won't hold any weight. Just saying, "I believe I'll be fine--I have faith" isn't really trusting in God--it's making up a wish and then telling yourself it will come true because you believe in it. And that's not Christian faith--that's a load of dingoes' kidneys.
We don't get to put words in God's mouth that we wish God had promised, and then insist that we can cash a check that God hasn't really written. I don't get to say, "I have faith that God will give me a million dollars on my pillow in the morning," and then expect it to appear when my alarm goes off, and I don't get to say, "Jesus has saved me from sin, and therefore I can't get COVID, either," because that ain't the promise Jesus has made us. That's pretending there's a stud behind the dry-wall just because you want there to be one. But you can't hang a mirror by nailing into a wish, and you can't secure a bookshelf solely on the holding power of your good intentions. It matters Who we trust. It matters in Whom we are anchored.
Ultimately, the promise we hang our lives on is that God will go through the difficult stuff with us, not that we won't have to face the difficult things "if only we believe." When markets and empires and wishful thinking all let us down, the living God proves reliable to hold us. That's what our faith is rooted in--or rather, that's Who our faith is rooted in.
Today, maybe it's a good idea to examine again what and who we place our trust in, and which are the things or voices in our lives we might want to think again before putting any weight on. Maybe today is a day to double down on our trust in the living God to hold us an to bring us through.
Lord God, help us to trust you and your voice, above the background noise luring us in other directions.
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