A Tiny Seed of Faith

"Jesus said, 'To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.' " - [Mark 4: 26-34].

Faith "is the substance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see." -[Hebrews 11:1].

Today, so many loudly decry this thing called Faith. Today, many compare Faith to a belief in Unicorns, in the Tooth Fairy, and in The Easter Bunny. (Although, when it comes to Christmas, we enthusiastically post signs around our homes declaring "Believe" - when we mean that magical, albeit perhaps foolish, belief in Santa Claus.) Faith has been relegated to the dust bin of mythology, fantasy and childish thinking.

Faith is, quite simply, a belief from the heart, of what we CANNOT see.

I would posit to you that even an ardent Secularist believes in things he cannot see: Consider our belief and hope that the sun shall rise tomorrow. We "know" that the sun is there in the morning, even if it is obscured by a deep swathe of clouds. Consider our belief that a woman is pregnant just because of a positive pregnancy test. Even though an ultrasound would detect nothing in the first few days, we believe in, and hope for, the tiny life growing inside the woman.

It is not delusional or fantastical to believe in things we cannot see. We humans beings have faith in the unseen every day!

Gallup Polls since the early 1960's have consistently shown, that 90% of Americans polled believe in God or a Higher Power. The same Gallup Polls have shown that 72% believe in angels and 71% believe in Heaven.

To live without Faith, however, is to live in a "horizontal world".- [Catholic Transcript, October 2012]. In that world, we rely only upon ourselves as humans, in a world rife with frailties, confusion, violence, war and despair. We humans are capable of such glorious successes but also of such dramatic failures.

I grew up in a home without Faith. If I merely mumbled, "God bless you", when someone sneezed, I was greeted with a glaring look. After age 14, I was not allowed to go to church. I ended up living my Faith in my daily life, but unable to express it verbally.

Where there was strife, envy, greed and hate, I would mend the family clothes, tend the garden, knit my sibling a sweater, and help with the dinner dishes.

For years, I did not understand how I got this Faith, when apparently no one else in my family did? For years, I was under the mis-impression that you got Faith by sitting in church. When my parents took church away, I was in a panic that they were taking my Faith away. I didn't realize that that cannot happen, because we are all born with a seed of Faith inside of us.

The Catholic Catechism says, in its First Articles, "The desire for God is born within the human heart."  It is an integral part of me. No one can take it away. I cannot apologize for it, any more than I can apologize for the texture of my hair, the timbre of my voice, or the tone of my skin.

In this parable, Faith is like a tiny mustard seed. You see, you don't need vast amounts of Faith, just a tiny seed. If  nurtured, this seed can grow into a towering plant.

A novice might not recognize this "desire for God." But I believe that it begins with the desire for something larger than ourselves. On a starry summer night, I might look up at the sky and feel a sense of awe that there are more stars than I can count- and probably billions more that I cannot see.

I do know that as a child, I longed for that unconditional Love that is so healing to the Soul. But my parents did not believe in God, so they likely did not believe that I had a Soul. Years later, I learned that God IS Love -- and so really, my longing for Love was a deep desire for God, and for an earthly expression of that Love by my parents. I could have become bitter and angry that I never received any Love from my parents, and in the process, I could have rejected God, too. But I am a survivor, and abiding Love from God is what has saved me in this Life.

Perhaps it was my Faith in a much brighter picture, and Hope in a more loving future, that kept me going all those years. I would say that that Faith and Hope probably came from God, too, because the odds were surely against me in a scientific and statistical way. Was I a fool to believe that I could one day rise above all the trauma, and come to thrive?

If you believe only in a statistical, data-driven, scientific world, I ought to be in jail, harming myself, in an abusive relationship, to be an abusing mother myself, addicted to drugs, alcoholic, homeless, and on and on. But I am not.

I am a miracle! And all because of that tiny seed of Faith and Hope and Love.

[Related Postings: "The Mustard Seed", 10/16/13].

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