01.10 | By Faith
Hebrews 11:1-16
‘But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.’
Hebrews 11:16
I spoke to a friend this morning who is planning a move to Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Stratford, if you’re unfamiliar, is a beautiful little town. The river flows through the quaint town centre, green parks and overhanging willows lining its banks. The town itself, the birth- (and death-) place of William Shakespeare, retains a Tudor quality — quirky shops and cobbled side alleys, art galleries and artisan ice cream parlours. Street musicians and riverbank restaurants add to the holiday vibe. Lovely homes, lovely river, lovely schools, lovely town.
All in all, the move from Birmingham to Stratford-Upon-Avon is understandable.
Today begins among the most famous chapters in the New Testament. It is a sweeping, storytelling, symphony of faith — biblical heroes’ stories told in short phrases, poetic rhythms punctuating a chapter that at its heartbeat reminds us that all spirituality and all salvation hinges on a single quality:
Faith.
This faith assumes that the unseen is a greater reality than the seen. This faith is rooted in hope of a coming future. This faith does things — it makes lavish sacrifices, walks with God, builds massive boats on dry plains. This faith leaves comfortable homes to venture to unknown lands on a prophetic word, and begins families with a distinct culture of promises that can only have any meaning by the presence of faith.
And, we are told, the faith of these individuals was characterised by something specific:
They are exiles on the earth.
They desire a better country.
They are seeking a homeland.
Inherent to the faith experience is a disaffection with the small world without God. It begins in a dissatisfaction with this world the way it is. It is a dissatisfaction with poverty and warfare, with sickness and death, with isolation and injustice and a desecrated creation. It is a disaffection with an explanation that all we see happened by freak coincidence — the complexity of you and I and our lived experience of self and consciousness being nothing more than an improbable mass of cells, operating in biological union for a short while, before we decompose and the universe continues its pointless eternal expansion to some perceived future cataclysm. It is a disaffection with accumulation, a disaffection with careerism, a disaffection with politics, a disaffection with competition.
For disaffection is often the seedbed of faith. Because in in the soil of disaffection a seedling of yearning is beginning to grow.
A yearning for a better country.
A yearning for our homeland.
Faith is a catalytic event, that turns disaffection into hope. It is what happened to Abraham, when his yearning for something more than the land of the Chaldeans connected itself to a longing of a better homeland, and the readiness to pack up and go. Faith is the spark that lights the dry wood of our disaffection into a furnace of new creation. Faith is the name of the road that forks upwards at the crossroads of disaffection — the downward road heading nowhere but disillusionment, hedonism, nihilism, and a life focused upon the self.
Do you feel ill at ease in this world? Do you feel the disaffection?
Take heart. Let it spark faith into life. For you walk this world as an exile, and thus yearning will always be our way. And yet, we walk with an indescribably greater homeland before us. We seek a better country.
And the path that we take towards this homeland has been told to us today:
Faith.
Reflect:
By faith we do things. What might the Spirit be leading me to lean towards today, in the direction of my Homeland?
Pray:
Father,
Give me faith.
When I find things in this world
That I love—
Things of beauty and flavour and wonder and laughter,
Would you tell my heart that I love these things
Insomuch as they are diluted foretastes
Of Home.
When I find things in this world
That I hate—
Things of depression and darkness and corruption and fear,
Would you remind this heavy soul
Of the coming horizon,
Of the better country,
Of the certainty of things unseen.
And thus, Father,
Enable me to walk with direction
And with hope.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Chronicles 6:12-7:22 | Proverbs 24:17-22