The Faith of a Mustard Seed

AM Psalm 119:137-160 • Job 23:1-12 • John 1:43-51
PM Psalm 139 • Proverbs 4:7-18 • John 12:20-26

Sometimes I feel like my faith can best be located in the Lost and Found Department. That’s a hard thing to admit.

Most days I, like Job, am gleefully going about confident in the knowledge that God is right there with me. We are in lockstep. When I run He is the breath in my lungs and when I pause, I can actually feel God resting with me. My faith, my trust, my belief are palpable.

Then things go awry. Life doesn’t go my way. I can’t find the answer when I want it or the one I want. I may have a decision to make, and I don’t like the options. A pandemic leaps from out of nowhere and ruins everything. Our nation is in turmoil. I feel alone. Where are you Lord? Why are you hiding? If you were here you would surely fix this mess. I NEED YOU!

Job lamented “if only I knew where to find him.” I have on occasion, especially this year, expressed a similar emotion. Like Job, I go in search of the Almighty and hold up all my good deeds as proof that God should always be near me. I plead my case and listen for the reply. There is none to be heard. Doubts, doubts, doubts! My complaint is truly bitter. [1]

Rest assured, fellow Pilgrims, God has never left me. He never left Job, and He has never left you. As the Psalmist said in tonight’s reading, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” [2]

Often to “find” the Lord I may have to follow His path into unlikely and sometimes uncomfortable places. I often don’t want to go where I am being led, which honestly is what got me in the jam in the first place. I can identify with Nathaniel in today’s Gospel reading, “Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?” I exude similar incredulity about some of the destinations God presents to me. Surely you don’t want me go there. Can anything good come from that place, doing that task, changing my direction, giving up that habit, surrendering my will? To “locate” my faith again, I have to let God be God and accept all that that means. Job’s friend Elihu put it well when he said, “For God does speak – now one way, now another – though man may not perceive it.” [3] Wrestling with our faith is a part of our journey and always results in a stronger faith.

Jesus found me like he did Nathaniel and Philip in today’s Gospel reading and has never let go. When I can’t feel God, I have moved, not God. I may be a wayward follower on occasion. And that’s okay. After all Nathaniel only decided to follow him when Jesus told him he saw him under a fig tree. That decision allowed Nathaniel to see miraculous, holy things.

If we are willing God will show us amazing things too! Let’s all be willing.

1 See Job 23:2. Note that it took Job a while to get to that point. Earlier he responded to his wife, “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” Job 2:10b

2 Psalm 139:7

3 Job 33:14

Written by Dennis McKinnie

...a stumbler along a well-defined path.