X.
“Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” (1 Peter 1.21)

I wonder if we could use this sentence and most especially the first words, “Through him you have come to trust in God …” as a lens through which to read and reflect on this entire passage?

“… you have come to trust in God … faith and hope set on God.”

What does the passage offer us as what that life looks like and how it is lived? Consider the life lived by “trust … faith … hope … in/on God”?

XI.
Might we also take sentence as a lens through which to look at our own life? When, where, how is our life lived by “… trust in God … faith and hope … set on God”?

And if need be we can ask ourselves when is our life not lived that way?

But first look for the signs that you life is lived by that kind of faith.

XII.
Harry Emerson Fosdick has a wonderful book entitled “The Meaning of Faith.” He starts the volume showing many of the ways that “faith” is a natural part of living our everyday, work-a-day lives. He is not writing of divine faith or theological faith but a “natural” faith. The kind of faith that we exercise when we drive down a certain road and know we will arrive at our friend’s home. Fosdick gives many (and better) examples.

Of course, he does move on that write of faith in God, divine faith.

Allow me to point to a few words Fosdick pens as he contrasts faith and fear –

Fear imprisons, faith liberates;
fear paralyzes, faith empowers;
fear disheartens, faith encourages;
fear sickens, faith heals;
fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable —
and, most of all,
fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life,
while faith rejoices in its God.

• from, Harry Emerson Fosdick, “The Meaning of Faith,” p 187.

May we find The Way that begins to leave fear behind and begins to walk with faith.

chalres
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}