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January 4

Walking by Faith

While we love to bask in the light of God’s presence with us, we also have to learn to walk in the seeming darkness of God’s strange absence. Streams of living water and the desert are part of the Christian experience.

There is not one color to the Christian life. There is no single pattern to Christian spirituality and there is no singular theological theme that captures God’s wisdom. But there is complexity. There is revelation. There is growth. There is mystery.

Living the Christian life is full of color. And there are also times of darkness.

There are many contours in the road of faith and we often move between indifference and fervor, despair and hope, faithlessness and obedience.

In the midst of this ever changing landscape of the journey of faith, Meister Eckhart poses an important question for us: “When you are in low condition, and feel forsaken, see if you are just as true to him [God] as when your sense of him is most vivid and if you act the same when you think all help and comfort [is] far removed as you do when God seems nearest.”4

This penetrating question lays bare our motivations in the spiritual life. The answer is that by ourselves we would probably waver in the dark place. But God can firmly hold us even by his seemingly absent presence. Even in the darkest of places we can grow in faith.

Reflection

God reveals and hides himself. When the latter occurs we are called to great trust, attentiveness, and faith in the God who will draw us back in time to the open spaces of light.