Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1 NETtext)
This verse from the bible states something extraordinary. It says that faith is being convinced of what we do not see. It means believing in something without any proof. In this modern age of science and technology where everything is viewed through skepticism, and proof is demanded about anything new or unusual, faith might seem like an outrageous idea. However you might be surprised to find out that it is not so and faith is as commonplace as people. Let me go one step further and tell you that faith is the oxygen for human society. But before we go into that discussion let me tell you a couple of incidents from my own life.
When I was in the 10th standard, I used to go to school on my bicycle. I liked riding my bicycle. However one day my experience riding it wasn’t very good. That day, I was already late when I left from home, so was riding relatively fast. Not very fast, because the road wasn’t so clear. So when I came to a small turn, due to my speed and some amount of sand on the road, my bicycle slept, and I fell…
When I was getting up, I knew that something was wrong with my wrist. So, I decided not to go to school and go back home. I somehow managed to ride my bicycle back to home with one hand. My dad was at home at that time so he took me to a hospital nearby, they did an X-ray and surely there was a little crack in my wrist bone. So they made me wear a plaster of paris cast for 21 days. This incident happened on a Saturday. I was able to attend school from the next week on wards. Because of the right treatment the injury healed well and I did not have any other problems.
When I was in the 11th standard, I participated in a sports festival at school. A sack race to be precise and a 3 legged race. It was fun, however during the sack race, I dislocated my right ankle. It was noting serious so we went to a nearby bone-setter. He was cheap and pretty popular in the area. He probably has no degrees or a license(or whatever you need to do that kind of job). So we went to him and he relocated my ankle. No problems, however he gave some painkillers and some other pills. I came home and took the pills and went to rest.
However after half an hour, my head started to burn and I couldn’t sleep. So I woke up and my mom told me that my whole face was swollen. It was swollen so much that I could barely open my eyelids. It was the result of the pills that I took. Just not the “intended” result. It was an adverse effect(as wikipedia calls it). Because of that I had to take some other medicine too, and wasn’t able to attend school for a week.
You must be thinking why am I rambling like this… Well the point is, the object in which you put your faith and how much faith you put in that object is equally important. If I didn’t trusted any of the hospital or the bone-setter, I would have been walking around with a broken wrist or a dislocated ankle for a longer time, not to mention I might have damaged myself even more. However I did put my faith in both of them. I trusted them completely and didn’t ask any questions about what they were doing with my broken hand or dislocated ankle because I just believed they knew what they were doing. I trusted them equally, but the results weren’t the same.
This is how we live our everyday lives. Putting faith in the people around us. We trust our doctors. We trust the chemist who gives medicine based upon the prescription the doctor gives us (because we ourselves cannot make any sense of doctor’s hand writings…). We take the medicine without knowing what kind of effect it would have on us. We do all these things based on faith. But sometimes the people that we trust fail us. That is why it is important in whom you put your faith.
Psalms in bible are ridden with scripture that advise us to put our faith in God. God loves us, cares for us, is eternal and most importantly, He is faithful.
Bible says: God is faithful, by whom you were called into fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (I Corinthians 1:9 NETtext)