What Shape is Your Faith?

What Shape is Your Faith?                              March 12, 2018
 

Shape.  Do you know how to assess the right shape for the right hole?  There was a toy children used to play with that required them to put blocks into a hole that correctly corresponded with their shape.  Do you remember?  How many children tried to put that round block in the square hole before learning that doesn’t work? 

The movie, The Shape of Water just won the big award at the big award show.  If you aren’t into sci-fi, or art shows or parables, I don’t recommend the movie.  But the point to the movie is about loving the unexpected or finding love that fills in all the gaps in your life.  The shape of water is ‘fluid’ and moves where it wants to go.  There is no block to put into the right place, only trust that love finds its way. 

Ok…  where am I going with this?  It is still Lent and Easter is coming.  I wonder what the shape of faith is?  Is your faith more like blocks you have to fit into the right hole or water that flows, free-form into and around all things?  It seems like the right answer is one or the other, but what if the answer is both?  Sometimes faith is specific and sometimes faith is fluid. 

The shape of faith is the shape of the CROSS.  Two boards of wood, nailed together, overlapping at one point, became an instrument for death.  Jesus and many others, were hung on the cross to kill them in a public display of violent hate disguised as justice.  But God interrupted the story of murder and changed it.  God is the plot twist that redeems this event of history.  God mocked the ones who believed they could silence God’s incarnate emissary of love to humanity.  The shape of Faith is the shape of the Cross transformed into an instrument of God’s power for giving life. 

The shape of faith is also the shape of HOPE.  Hope is fluid and personal.  Hope is fluid but always looks into the future.  Hope moves where it will, when it will.  The shape of faith is hope because faith always anticipates God’s intervention, and presence.  Hope always waits for something to happen that will bring a good change, a new experience or a blessing.  Hope waits for a new job, a new baby, a new perspective or a new place.  The shape of Faith is the shape of Hope leaning forward into God’s tomorrowland. 

Faith is not a prescription but a decision you make and a state of your heart.  It is the CROSS and HOPE working together to create a more beautiful and holy world. 

‘Now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.’  Hebrews 11:1

Rev. Dr. Leigh Ann Shaw

 


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