Stubborn Faith

My faith is stubborn.  

When the world is on edge, or systems are teetering, secular or religious, our faith must endure, become stubborn, bullheaded, and insistent on the goodness of God.  

Faith is in hoping and dreaming for a better, more just world, where everyone is treated with love and offered grace. I’m not done dreaming or hoping and my faith is even more stubborn in the belief that God’s goodness cannot be taken out of this world or my heart and soul. I find myself stubborn about this. You can’t tell me that goodness has been taken out of this world and evil is in charge, no matter what the world is telling me or us.  

It has become an important spiritual practice to look for, seek out, and share the goodness of God that is in the world through word and deed.  

In my Christian faith tradition, I hear Jesus asking, dreaming, and praying that we all be one. I hear the dream of God that we may all live as one human family. My faith is stubborn in the belief that God is listening to our collective praying within all faith traditions. I believe further that deep within our soul is the yearning for peace. Unfortunately hate and anger sells and has inundated our news and social feeds.  

Part of what is driving us apart is external yes. However, a larger part of what is driving us apart is the belief that this is how the world is and or supposed to be: divided, angry, hateful, and selfish to a fault. When this is what we hear and see every day it becomes an unconscious belief and way of being in the world.  

Angela Davis says, I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. 

I no longer accept that the world is run by anger, contrary to all evidence of our current predicament, with a lingering pandemic and political brinkmanship, all for the love of power.  

I am changing my heart, listening to my stubborn faith so that I am the goodness in the world that I need and seek. Maybe we can change a small part of our world by being the goodness our local setting needs.  

I am the goodness in the world that I need and seek. 

My faith is stubborn and bullheaded in a God who stepped into history in the person of Jesus to show the world that the goodness of God and the abundance there in fall on and incarnate within all of creation. The goodness of the God of abundance lies within each heart. The world does all it can to snatch that inherent goodness from the soul of humanity. The world tells us that division must exist, and God is the one who divides between the have and have nots. No!! 

My faith is stubborn, and my spirit is bullheaded. 

Goodness exists and there are more people united and working towards the inherent goodness than we are being told about because nuance and kindness don’t pause our scrolling or encourage us to tune in.  

Gandhi gifted us with the wisdom of being the change in the world that we want to see. 

The more we find and witness that goodness, the more it becomes not just a part of our faith, it becomes who we are in the world.   

May your faith be stubborn: May your spirit be bullheaded

May we all know the goodness of God:

May we all know the goodness of humanity.

May we all seek that goodness.

May we all witness to that goodness through word and deed in our local settings and faith practices.

I am

You are

We are all

The goodness that we seek.