Though you do not see him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith--the salvation of your souls.
How do we have the one we cannot see, and love the one who is not there?
It is a miracle that the one who is not seen is the One we've claimed as ours.
The Christian’s miracle is his trust. Christ's miracle is our trust.
In this passage, in this moment, faith is the having of Christ. Faith is the place where man or woman stand transfigured with Christ, even as we, it seems, submit, disfigured by wilderness. Our faith is the home Christ has made in us as we wait for His return. Our Faith is the place where Christ who is risen waits, impatient, longing, for the Christ who'll come again. And best of all, our faith is the home Christ has made by His Word.
With this verse, it is as if the Lord has said, “I am where I am trusted. And I am there. And their great joy is mine. And the trust in which they prayer and gather is my glory when I return.”
When I pray on the stoop of the large care home, we are in the presence of one another man, a large disheveled resident, waiting for pizza. When we read the Apostles’ Creed or a Psalm, a pizza man with pull up with the sound of Limp Bizkit in his car.
If you are leading prayer, or being led by prayer, and a man walks through you to deliver pizza, and counts out change in the middle of you, you feel as if worship is farce.
How can it be said, here, in this moment that we have Christ? And Christ has us? The spell has broken, the prayers, a jumble, and people half-listening. Christ, the presence of Christ, has been scattered by 90’s American rap-rock.
But Larry [name changed], leading us, looks up from his bulletin and waits for the pizza man to count the change, then looks down, continues on with the prayers, not indignant, but sovereign over it. Making the nuisance a time of patient waiting. We make our quiet return to the prayers in front of us. In the diligence, in the trust, in the return, Christ has us, is with us. Christ is near as where He is trusted.
