The scriptures for this topic tend to have two themes: one of Christ appearing, and the other of us appearing to Christ. Both have to do with a judgement of sorts. In the first case, Christ appeared in his resurrected state to his followers. He had looked into them and judge of them that they had enough faith to see him. They had reached a state where they could behold his glory, and have their faith completed with the knowledge given by a first hand witness.
I've been reading lately about faith and thinking about what it means to have faith. My definition tends to get tweaked every few years as I learn more, but right now my definition of faith is that it is a type of belief. Hope is also a type of belief, but where they differ is in how this belief plays into our lives. Faith is the action of our belief, it is what makes a farmer plant grain and what makes us ask someone out on a date. Some might call it "taking a risk," but it isn't reckless with no grounding, it is the intelligent decision that we believe something that hasn't happened yet is going to happen so we're going to move forward like it did happen. Once the event takes place (like seeing God face to face) we no longer can have faith in it, as that faith has been replaced with concrete knowledge.
Seeing Christ back then, or now, would mean a lot to me in this uncertain world. There is peace and fulfillment we're all trying to achieve, but there is also a need to find truth and what is real. I guess that's what the amazing thing is about faith, that is can give us just as much comfort and assurance as knowledge can give even though all we have to go off of is what we can feel with our hearts. But isn't that what all those books and movies are about? To find something that is true that can only be confirmed within our hearts?
No comments:
Post a Comment