Faith

The invitation of Jesus to "Come and see" (John 1:39) is not an invitation to arrive, but to go.  It is an invitation which is focused not on the destination, but on the journey.  And like the journey to which Abraham was invited with the words, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you,"  (Genesis 12:1), it is a journey to what might be called "know not where."  When we decide to follow Jesus, we are not handed a book detailing all the twists and turns of the road, the dangerous places that are ahead, or even those other places which could be called comfort zones.   

While we begin the journey with Jesus as a faith response to what He has done for us on the cross, it is hard for us in the beginning to understand the real meaning of living by faith.  In the beginning it bears the marks of a grand exciting adventure and while such is true, it is also a hard way that will cause us to separate ourselves from things that are familiar, places that speak of security, and even people upon whom our life seems to depend.  What is unfathomable to us as we start is the reality that we will have at the end of the journey the very same thing with which we started it and that is nothing.    

Faith is about turning loose that we might take hold.  Faith is what enables us to turn loose of the things which are temporary so that our hands might be able to hold more tightly to the One who has the power to take us the final steps of the journey to our eternal Home.  When we come to those final moments of holding breath within us, everything will have been turned loose so that everything can be gained.  Faith in Christ slowly and surely takes us to such a moment when the gray shadows of earth are overwhelmed by the great glories of the eternal dwelling prepared for us.