Have a Little Faith in Me...(and Really, It Should Only Be a Little...)*

Chad is giving the sermon at church tomorrow, and his general topic is faith. Of course it's only 9:15 p.m., so he's still writing. We've talked about his sermon but we never delve into his talks too much before he gives them, so I can really only speculate on what his sermon will cover. I think it will, at least in part, touch on what "faith" means to people who don't necessarily believe in a god or some type of deity or spiritual force. 

Since I haven't written a blog post in a while and I've been looking for inspiration and I'm on my own right now as Chad works on his sermon and I don't want to work or put away laundry or learn lines, AND I've had a fair amount of wine, it seems like a grand idea for me to write about faith, too.

"Can I have an 'Amen'?" (or a polite nod)

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word faith is a surprisingly awesome folk-y song we used to get to sing in the Missouri Lutheran church that my family attened when I was a kid. It was based on the I Corinthians 13 with the lyric "and you shall have faith, and you shall have hope, and you shall have love. But the greatest of these is love."

I certainly think love is pretty awesome, but now, with the wise perspective my advancing years grant me, I'm wondering if it's really the greatest. I realize this is hard to put this sentiment into folk song lyrics, but is it possible to pick a favorite of the three? Can you really have any of them without the other? 

I'm thinking now about how I grew up in a home with a ton of love, but not necessarily a lot of faith or hope. We pretty much always expected the worst to happen. 

But then again, what is faith? What do we have faith in? Maybe my mom and I did have faith, but it was faith in all our contingency plans. We certainly weren't passive. We always expected disaster but still kept trying to figure out how we were going to plan and schedule our way around it. 

I know this may seem like a trivial approach to faith, but sometimes how these big ideas play out in our daily lives is the most telling. I think we need some basic sense of faith in ourselves and each other so we can cope with failure, uncertainty, and all that general bad stuff life throws at you. Faith isn't an "everything is going to be okay" but a "we'll have to muddle through somehow" approach for me. 

When I do think of faith in action on a small scale, a very recent example keeps coming to mind. Last weekend we had performances of the two church bands--one of kids and one of adults--that Chad led. Mosquitoes and sore legs from hauling equipment aside, it was a pretty magical night that couldn't have happened without faith. When Chad first told me of his plan to organize and lead these bands as a fundraiser, I thought he was delusional. But he was so excited and I had faith in his vision and ability that I agreed to support the idea and serve as co-organizer, equipment transporter, and sandwich provider. So Chad had faith in his dream, I had faith in him, and everyone who participated had faith in Chad and each other. (You really can't have a band without faith...faith in your bandmates and faith in yourself and faith in the power of an audience coming together, perhaps with the fortification of some alcoholic beverage). 

So maybe faith not tied to god seems trivial, or maybe it's even more impressive because it can exist in these small moments. 

And I have total faith that Chad's sermon tomorrow will be amazing. And that we'll make it to church in time. 

*Post title refers to the John Hiatt song, which you REALLY should listen to if you don't already know it.