The Currency of Faith

I woke up yesterday morning to a fear-filled update from a friend whose family is dealing with heavy, heavy medical issues. They waver daily between hope and despair, between small steps forward and crippling steps back.

I prayed that morning, and this one, almost fully faithful to the command to pray without ceasing. I felt my heart squeeze out wordless prayers while vacuuming and fixing breakfast. I wiped away tears while making the bed and changing a diaper. I gathered my children in a circle and wept as we prayed, out loud and hands held, with voices trembling with ineloquence, with bold petitions for healing, for comfort, for peace.

My son spoke childlike gratitude for our health, for the health of his baby sister. He was confident enough in God’s answers to our prayers to bet me a whole dollar on the outcome, and he just can’t wait to meet the baby we cradle in our hearts as we kneel before God Almighty.

And we say Amen, or let it be so, and the carpet is still dirty and the laundry is still piled high and my healthy, beautiful, compassionate children are fighting over a toy they literally found in the street and I am shouting at the top of my lungs, SERIOUSLY, STOP FIGHTING!, and my prayers become more of an utterance or a grumbling before I catch myself and hope my back-to-normally-inconsistent faithfulness has no bearing on the willingness of God to intervene.

And just like that, I am back again, curled up in my Self again, puffed up with self-importance as if the economics of Heaven is based on the currency of my faithfulness, or lack thereof, forgetting, conveniently, that God — GOD — is eager and in control.

And that He simply has the extravagance to invite me to participate, to sneak me a peek at what His wonders can do; He tells me to pull up a chair, to lean in close, to ask with audacity and boldness and then watch Him blow my freaking mind away.

And so I wait. We wait. We hold hands and our breaths as God whittles down the odds and pares away the excuses, praying that He is only stripping away all other answers to reveal Himself more fully as the Sustainer of our faith, the Author and Perfecter of our faith, as the interested and able God of our faith, so that We. Will. Know.

This is my God, our God, the God who marches before us and exceeds the limits and shatters the odds to which we are chained.

This is the God of miracles, and I am arrogant enough to ask for one.