This week: Leaps of Faith Edited by: Jeff  
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"Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief."
— C.S. Lewis
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of the regular editors of the official Spiritual Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 400 newsletters across the site in that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me directly or submit feedback in the comment box at the bottom of this newsletter. |
Leaps of Faith
Life, by its nature, is a chaotic and uncertain thing. We are forever encountering situations that surprise us, that challenge us, that sometimes even break us. It's not easy; the people I know who claim to have had easy lives are either lying (sometimes even to themselves) or haven't really lived. The world is an amazing place, but it's also completely unpredictable. Some people win the lottery; others lose their homes to foreclosure. Some are blessed with excellent health and long, long lives; others' lives are tragically cut short by heart attack, cancer, AIDS, or a thousand other possible afflictions. And as much as we try to impose order on our lives - to control the events and outcomes that we experience - the truth is that no one really knows what tomorrow holds. It might be a day just like any other day, or it might be a day that changes the entire course of your life.
Sooner or later, we all encounter an event or situation in our lives that requires a leap of faith. We simply can't be one hundred percent certain about every single choice and decision we make throughout our lives. And this isn't relegated merely to matters of religion; faith is required in almost all areas of our life. While faith is required to believe in a higher power and have conviction about what happens after you die, it requires just as much faith to believe that the doctors caught all the cancer with chemotherapy and that it won't come back. Or that the dollar you gave to the homeless person outside the supermarket will be spent on food rather than wasted on booze. Or that when you exchange vows and say "I do" at your wedding, you really will stay together "through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, 'til death do you part." You have to have faith that you're doing the right thing because the truth is there are no guarantees in life. You can't check every remaining cell in a person's body to make sure there are zero cancer cells remaining. You can't follow that homeless person around and make sure he spends that money on necessities. And you can't foresee every possible challenge and tribulation in your marriage and say for sure that your relationship will endure. In order for each of us to move on with our lives and continue to function, some things require us to make a leap of faith and say, "Even without absolute proof or certainty, I choose to believe that this is the right thing to do."
In the past, one of the things I've struggled with about my faith is actually putting my trust in something I can't see or hear or even necessarily feel. Others around me, even close friends and family, are blessed in the fact that many of them can interpret the presence of the divine. God (in whichever of his forms they choose believe) reveals himself to them and they can look at a situation and say, "This person found a job after being unemployed for a year. That's God's will." Or, "That person and his wife have been trying for years to have a baby and they finally had a baby girl last week! That's God's good work." Or even, "Look at this gorgeous day and all the beauty God has designed." I don't feel those things, and as a result, I grew up a little more skeptical, believing that there's a rational, scientific explanation for everything. The job that person found was a result of hard work and long months of job searching finally paying off. The couple who had that baby were just lucky that this time a viable sperm found a viable egg and the pregnancy took. The day sure is beautiful, but it's because the sun in shining, the birds are chirping and the flowers are blooming because it's Spring, etc. etc. etc. That's not to say I didn't believe in the presence of the divine, but that I put far, far more stock in plausible and logical causes and effects. If you get sick, you get medicine, and the medicine makes you better. It's a matter of science.
But even I had to admit that, in certain things, it's a matter of faith. Not everything can be explained in concrete facts and absolute certainties. Sometimes I'll look back at the things in my life and just have to believe that there was some greater reason for things happening the way they did. When my wife and I first moved down to Los Angeles, we really struggled financially. Thankfully, one of us always had a job... even though layoffs and career changes and bad jobs, when one of us was down and out, the other one was working full time and able to pay the bills. When I got laid off, she was working. When she had to quit working full time to go back to school, I was working. And while it took a long time for us to do anything more than scrape by on a single income, we also didn't lose our apartment, have our power shut off, need to move back home, etc. It's hard to justify years of provision as merely a coincidence.
It can be downright scary to make decisions and act on faith when facts and absolute certainties can't be known. Like Indiana Jones stepping out onto the invisible bridge in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, those first steps into the unknown can be downright terrifying, especially when we don't have a safety net and aren't operating on assurances that everything will work out. But if you never take a leap of faith about anything in your life, you're going to spend your entire life waiting for certainty that may never come. At some point, we all have to decide whether we're willing to believe in something enough to accept it as true, even if we don't have the evidence or proof we'd like. I had to choose to believe in a God I can't see or hear or feel when I became a Christian. A divorcee will have to decide if he or she can believe in the possibility of finding a soul mate in a second (or third or fourth) spouse. When writers compose a manuscript on spec, they have to believe that publishers will want to publish it and readers will want to read it. Without taking those leaps of faith - no matter how big or small - we're condemning ourselves to a life of never really reaching out for anything.
Leaps of faith aren't easy... but how many truly worthwhile and satisfying things are?
Until next time,
Jeff
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Spiritual: December 24, 2025 Issue [#13514]
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