If you want to identify me, to know who I am, don’t bother to read my résumé. The best way to identify me is to “ask me what I’m living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for” (Thomas Merton, My Argument with the Gestapo). The scriptures for the second Sunday in Lent suggest a variation of that question. What do I believe is the promise of life I’m living into, and what stands in the way of that promise being fulfilled in my life? So here are some things I believe, some little windows into my faith.

First, I believe “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). Another translation says it’s “the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen” (NLT). Jesus began his ministry by saying to all who would listen, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). Your waiting is over, he told them; the promise of the ages is being fulfilled in your presence; the life you’ve hoped for is in your hands. Trust in that good news, and start living as if it’s true.

What are your greatest hopes for yourselves, your families, you congregation, your community? The challenge of our faith is to shift from waiting to embracing, to stop waiting for our greatest hopes to be fulfilled someday, and start living as if that’s happening today. Saint Paul urged the Corinthians “not to reject this marvelous message of God’s great kindness. For God says, ‘At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.’ Indeed God is ready to help you right now. Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:1-2 NLT).

Even though we don’t yet see the results we hope for, even though God’s promise for us may seem as improbable as it did for Abraham (Gen. 17:1-7), even though we seem to be wandering in a wilderness without a road map, even though we see now only dimly, as if in a mirror (1 Cor. 13:12), I believe faith calls us to live in “the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen” – and indeed is already happening.

So maybe we don’t look so much to the future. Maybe we learn to look to this day, to this moment, more closely, more faithfully, and with greater discernment, to discover the new thing God is doing – “now it springs forth,” Isaiah heard God say, “do you not see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isa. 43:19). Our way through the wilderness into the future is already under our feet, and as we walk faithfully, step by step, the way will appear.

A second thing I believe is that God “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). Our problem is not that we have hopes and dreams that seem beyond reach. Our problem is that our hopes and dreams are too small. Whatever the great hope we may have, the potential God has planted in us and is nurturing in us is far greater. “The greater danger for most of us,” Michelangelo wrote, “lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

In their old age, far beyond their child-bearing years, God gave Abram and Sarai new names, new identities – Abraham and Sarah – and promised that they would be “exceedingly fruitful” and become ancestors of “a multitude of nations” (Gen. 17:6). It was a promise far beyond anything Abraham and Sarah could imagine or expect, and you remember Sarah laughed.

History tells us repeatedly our vision is too low, our dreams too small. In 1943, Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”  Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said, “ten megabytes should be enough for anyone.” In 1946, Daryl Zanuck, of 20th Century Fox, said of television’s future, “People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” In 1903, it was predicted “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” In 1876 the president of Western Union predicted telephones would never catch on, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in 2007, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

And what of our visions, our hopes, our dreams for life, for ourselves, our families, our congregation, our community? What of our faith in a God who “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine”? As I said, our hopes and dreams are not beyond reach, they are too small, too limited, so we fail to see the great new future already springing forth among us. So I wonder, how is it that the scales might drop from our eyes (Acts 9:18) and we might see clearly the promise God is already fulfilling?

That brings me to a third thing I believe. Jesus said that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35). And Joseph Campbell, the great scholar of myth and tradition, said, “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” And what’s waiting for us the abundant life Jesus offered (John 10:10). Our vision, our hopes, our dreams for the future are, indeed, too small, but they’re large enough to blind us to the future God is opening for us. If we focus too much on our hopes, we may not ever see God’s plans. To take up our cross and lose our life is to let go of the future we’re planning so we can live the future God is offering to us today.

In the image of a prayer by Thomas Merton, I confess I don’t see the road ahead of us, and I don’t know for certain where it will lead. And even though I believe I’m following God’s will, that doesn’t mean I’m actually doing so. But if we trust enough in the future God has promised, even though we see nothing of it, and if we let that promise shape our lives today, we will discover that future is spread all around us, and we will find ourselves feasting at the table of God’s grace. ▪