Meditation: Faith and doubt

[Trishie]

We, who seek our eternal destiny in our loving God, ask that He will guide us beyond despondency and unbelief when faith seems hollow.

Our God in His humanity knows this mocking loneliness—as is evidenced in the desolation of His loud lament— “My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?” One feels troubled, yet encouraged, before such words from God incarnate. “You also, Lord? What sufferings underlie such a plea wrung from You?” Let us unite our doubt with Jesus’ faltering, for the Father looks with silent pity and unspeakable love on His Son, knowing that Jesus, though ever sinless, must choose to suffer with us, drinking the cup of our guilt to the full.

Anything is bearable if we have sustaining faith, but where belief dissipates we are stranded. There is no greater desolation to one who wishes to live according to the Spirit, than to lose the purpose of its requisite effort and pain, finding spiritual vacuum.

Yet if we remain faithful, such deprivation allows God to fill our being with God’s own divine will and truth, through act of faith by obedient will. As we are not yet pure and holy, we cannot even then, experience God except through faith. Until we are also freed at the appointed time from our mortal existence and its imperfect consequences, we cannot truly know God.

Should we bind ourselves wilfully from life in the Spirit, this can never be granted us—to know God who is Love. This divine love is the only source of our being. It is our true destiny. Deprivation of God’s love ultimately becomes our hell ( which is lovelessness ) forever.

…continued…

 

[Trishie]

Our failure to perceive God is close to God in a way that our mortal knowledge and perceptions of God cannot be. In His compassion, however, God frequently interprets Himself through our earthly nature. We are thereby confronted with, and may partake in, the mystery of Christ’s salvation and life. For this, our gratitude and praise to God’s loving mercy, for we cannot endure prolonged periods of spiritual desert without God’s support.

In the loneliness and secret wailing of doubt—endured in the privacy of our souls—we are united, we who desire God. Some are crushed who do not accept that true faith grows out of suspension of all expectation of proof and consolation. Yet these may free the soul into Your will, and perhaps even into deep contemplation and union with You.

To God I pray: For the doubt that sometimes troubles me, please make others’ doubt less painful. If that is to cheat them of walking this path to You, then let them know with deep faith, the function of this anguish in our spiritual development.

Give us strength to bear doubt when it comes, our God—so that no longer warring with the fallibility of our reason senses, we rest completely in You.

Grant us faith that asks no proof yet thereby allows truth to enter in its’ immutable reality. Therefore with Jesus we will presently say: “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit.” We thus abandon ourselves with Him to death of unbelief and sinfulness—into freedom of rising with Him into the eternal glory of the redeemed spirit. April 1981