Tag Archives: God

Of little faith

Posted on March 5, 2010 by | 5 Comments

I am participating in a discussion group (for me online; for others, either online and/or IRL) with the First Lutheran Church of Jamestown, N.Y. on the book, Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life by Richard Peace. I was invited to the group by Tara Lamont Eastman, with whom I have become acquainted through the blog Sleeping with Bread and now her own blog Uphill Idealist. This will be my fourth post as part of that group. The first post can be found here; the second, here; and the third, here.

In your own words – tell a Jesus story that is important to you and tell us why you choose it.

He got into a boat and his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm, came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us, we are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was great calm. The men were amazed and said, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the seas obey?”

Matthew 8:23-27

Why I chose this story is partially because of the humor inherent in this story: In the midst of the storm, Jesus was asleep. His reaction: “Dudes, relax, my Father, I and the Holy Spirit have it under control.” Then he yawns, gets up, calms the winds and the sea and goes back to sleep, I like to imagine. Their reaction: “Whoa, who is this guy who we’re hanging out with?”

Also I chose this story because I think that often it is our habit to call out to God in those times of storms in our lives instead of realizing he is there all the time. I think of something as simple as a couple nights ago when I was calling out for him after eating hot wings: “Lord, help me!” but when I’ve had a home-cooked meal, I don’t say, “Hey, thanks, dude.”

The footnote in my Bible, The Catholic Bible: Personal Study Edition, on Matthew 8:26 on the phrase: “Of little faith” says to see the footnote on Matthew 6:30 (“If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?”). The footnote reads:

Except for the parallel in Luke 12, 28, the word translated of little faith is found in the New Testament only in Matthew. It is used by him of those who are disciples of Jesus in whose faith in him as not as deep as it should be (see Mt 8, 26; 14:31; 16, 8 and the cognate noun in 17, 20).”

Even Peter was one of those disciples whose faith in God wasn’t as deep as it should have been, as evidenced in Matthew 14 when after starting to walk on the water, he began to doubt (“O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”). Yet it is this same Peter who later will have enough faith to answer Jesus when he asks who does Peter think Jesus is:

“You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”

Then just like that (Bam!), he is, at least, in terms of Catholic theology, made the founder of the Church and, in terms of other Christian traditions, given the keys to the kingdom.

If Peter can change like that, maybe there is hope for us also to change.

So if you are a Christian, what is your favorite Jesus story and why? If you are of another faith, what is your favorite story about a/the major religious figure(s) to your faith: Muhammad, Moses, Buddha, and why? If you are of no faith, what is your favorite story of Nietzsche (ahem, partially said tongue-in-cheek) or another philosophical figure like him, and why?

(After looking through all the music videos of “Walk on the Water,” including songs by Aerosmith and Eddie Money, I decided on this one. Yes, still apropos of nothing, but I always liked the Violent Femmes.)


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Posted in Soul

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When God first came alive to me

Posted on February 9, 2010 by | 7 Comments

I am participating in a discussion group (for me online; for others, either online and/or IRL) with the First Lutheran Church of Jamestown, N.Y. on the book, Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life by Richard Peace. I was invited to the group by Tara Lamont Eastman, with whom I have become acquainted through the blog Sleeping with Bread and now her own blog Uphill Idealist. This will be the first post as part of that group.

The first discussion point is based on the question: “We are all on a spiritual journey, so…Tell a brief story about when God first came alive to you.” What is your story?

God first “came alive” for me when I was two or three years old. I had burnt my hand on an plug I plugged into an outlet in an upstairs room of our house. My hand, which normally is white (well, pinkish flesh as I was, and still am. Caucasian), turned black. I remember crying out and my aunt Joan, who lived with us at the time and was in the same room, rushing to me. According to my mother, my aunt took me downstairs to where my mother was to get it cleaned under a faucet, prayed for me and my burnt hand, I don’t remember which one. Then afterward as my mother read a book to me, she noticed that my hand was no longer burnt.

This was before I said the Sinner’s Prayer with my mother at the age of four and “accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” Did I know what I was doing? No more than an infant in the Catholic Church knows, but I believe God’s hand was placed on me just the same as an infant who is baptized. Does this mean I was “saved” at that moment in terms of eternal security and all that jazz? I don’t believe so as the choice was, and is, still mine to choose or reject — just as the Israelites in Deuteronomy — did the blessing or the curse.

Regardless of that question, that moment was my first concrete experience with God for better and sometimes worse – since as for those of us who are Christians and even for those of you who are not Christians, but of others faiths, or no faith at all know that God, life, the universe and everything doesn’t always work in such dramatic ways. Often God, life, the universe and everything works in extremely more quiet ways than that, with a whisper and not a shout.

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Posted in Books, Soul

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2 rules to live by: Listen and keep your word

Posted on May 21, 2009 by | 2 Comments

Because of funerals for relatives earlier in the month, the last real post I had here was on May 5, where I discussed taking 10 minutes a day to ask God what He wanted for me/you each day. This was based on the teachings of Matthew Kelly, a lay Catholic.

Today I thought it’d be good to give a review of how that is going. Short answer: Not well. Longer answer: I’m still doing it, even if sporadically. The note is still up in on the mirror to remind me each day.

This morning, I did take 10 minutes to ask God what He wanted me of this day, and believe I heard two things:

  1. Listen
  2. Keep your word

The first seems so simple, but in reality, how often do we do it? For me as a Christian, it means listening for and to what God/Christ wants me to hear. For others, it might mean just listening period, centering yourself in your day.

It means listening not just at the start of my day, but also throughout the day in every moment. Is this what you want me to be doing, God? Or for those who are non-Christians or of no faith, is this what I should be doing?

The second perhaps relates more to me today in what I have told people I would do yesterday. In one instance, I told a fellow humor blogger (I also have a humor blog called Unfinished Rambler) that I would make room on that blog for an ad for his blog today. In another, I told a man for whom I’m going to cover a story tomorrow for the newspaper that this morning I would read over material that he sent me last night and get back to him with any questions I might have.

Again like the first thing, this seems so simple: keeping your word, but again in reality, how often do we do it? If we say we’re going to do something, we should do it, and if we know we’re not going to do it, then we shouldn’t say we will do it. (Aside: I’m beginning to sound like one of my late grandmothers more and more every day, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing: after all, she said not to put on credit things for which you didn’t have money, which I still think is sage advice.)

So I’m off. If I do only two things today, Lord, let it be these.

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Posted in Midweek Review, Mind, Soul

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10 Minutes A Day

Posted on May 5, 2009 by | 5 Comments

On Sept. 26, 2004, a man named Matthew Kelly came to St. Peter’s Church in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, where my wife and I are currently members but were not at the time. A videotape was made of the talk and while my wife and I already watched it once this past weekend, I watched it again this morning to take notes so I could share some of what he said with all of you.

“God wants us to live our lives while they’re actually happening. He wants us to wake up.”

This is how Kelly began, and then asked three questions for us to ponder:

1. What do you want?

We want to be happy, he said: physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. Intellectually, if we take 10 minutes a day to read a good book, our world expands, so it is spiritually if we take a few minutes a day to step into what Kelly calls “the classroom of silence”: our world expands.

“We know the things we want to make us happy, but we don’t do those things, because we are too busy.”

Busy doing what? Finding happiness. Or as he says it, “just about everything that means just about nothing to just about nobody just about anywhere and means nothing 100 years from now.”

2. What does God want?

Kelly said most people never ask the question, because they’re too scared of what God wants them to do. But first, what God doesn’t want is the following: to control, to manipulate, forcing you to do anything you don’t want.

What is it then that God does want?

He wants you to become the best version of yourself. That is our central purpose. Everything else makes sense.

Then Kelly asked for people to make a list of friends of who is helping you to become a better version of yourself and which ones are you helping to become a better version of themselves.

3. What do we all want a little bit more of?

One of the great myths of the 20th century is that time is our most valuable resource..time isn’t our most valuable resource. Energy is our most valuable resource.

He also said the things that make you happy and make you a better version of yourself also give you more energy.

Kelly then related how in college, he felt this restlessness within him, which he couldn’t put a finger on. A friend of his family’s was at a party and noticed this restlessness. “Maybe nothing’s wrong, maybe something’s missing,” the man told him. “You need to spend 10 minutes a day in church.”

Kelly told the man he already spent time in church every Sunday. The man said that isn’t what he meant. So over the next few weeks, Kelly began spending 10 minutes a day in church, first telling God what he wanted, then telling God about his problems and finally the question he said that changed his life: God, what do you think I should do?

Start with 10 minutes a day. Write down on a piece of paper: ’10 minutes a day’ and put it on your bathroom mirror.’

He then encouraged people to do it for just six weeks to start and added that “lives change when habits change.” However, he said unfortunately for 90 percent of the people that were there that evening back in September 2004, they’d probably say that they didn’t have to write it down, that they’d remember and then would promptly forget.

So that leaves 25 of 250 people (about the number of people that were at that talk) who would wake up and do it the next day, but then by day 5 would forget it and by the following Monday, 90 percent of the 10 percent would be continuing to do it, or 2.5 people.

With all the crisis in The Church today, he said, the problem isn’t all of what you see on CNN, but that 2.5 people can’t commit to 10 minutes a day.

Lastly, he said what it takes is perseverance and then related the story of Abraham Lincoln, who failed and failed and failed again, even having a nervous breakdown, but still went up to become President.

What are we doing? What does he want? To discover the dream, to become better versions of ourselves. Embrace the dream.

10 minutes
I am. Now will you?

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Posted in Body, Mind, Motivation Monday, Soul

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