Lent

by Connie Reece

Our challenge: We always hear that we are supposed to be in this life of faith for the long-term, that it is a marathon, not a sprint. Is that right? Is there ever a place for speedy faith? For sprinting?

My answer: You want me to think about sprinting? As in running? When I’m doing good just to walk? Are you crazy?

Sorry, I’m more than a little cranky tonight. I’ve not fully recovered from a serious bout of bronchitis that turned into asthma, which has left me short of breath. I walk next door to my mom’s house for dinner, and I’m winded. Depleted. I sit down and stare at my plate of food. I’m hungry but feel almost too tired to lift a fork to my mouth.

Almost. Catfish dredged in corn meal and fried golden brown helps me overcome my inertia, and I manage to eat.

Back to this week’s challenge, though. I am intrigued by the expression “speedy faith.” It strikes me as an oxymoron. Faith has no speed, does it? If it does, what is the speed limit? Do you get fined for speeding, or pulled over for going too slow? Who enforces the speed limit on faith?

I mull this over. For some reason my mind goes back–way back–to astronomy class at the University of Texas. One of the bits of trivia I’ve retained all these years is the speed of light: 186,282 miles per second. According to particle physics, no object with a real mass can travel faster than the speed of light.

Faith is not something you can see or touch, so therefore it has no real mass, at least according to the laws of physics. And yet, the Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

My brain is not getting enough oxygen to even attempt to answer the question whether faith travels faster than the speed of light (because it has no real mass), or whether, as a thing of substance, it is subject to the laws of the universe, which does impose a speed limit.

All I can tell you is that faith works. It produces results. I’ve seen it demonstrated over and over and over again in my life. You might say I’ve conducted my own, unscientific, experiments in faith.

And so, on a night when I’m not breathing well–when I have dozed off in the middle of every sentence I’ve written–I still have faith.

Faith that the One who creates and sustains life will keep filling my lungs with air, “because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25).

Amen.