Faith Is Our Come Along Friend

Very often we want something to take our grief away, our sorrow, our heart aches, and the difficulties of life. It is natural in our human nature to ask in difficult times that whatever we may be dealing with be taken away. In these times many of us turn to our faith and God. All too often we have been taught that prayer or our faith will take away our pain. Believe enough, pray enough, have faith strong enough and all will go away and all will be well.

That sounds fine in some instances. It even may work for a while and it may be what we need to hear. However, it will end up ringing hollow, or false, when sorrow, grief, sadness, and just plain crappy days take over our spirit and our cup overflows with sadness that faith and prayer can’t take away. When we are told that our faith will make everything ok, take away all of our pain and it doesn’t, we blame God and faith withers.

I was reminded of this on a recent pastoral visit to the hospital. All around was the grief of physical trauma to a loved one’s body or the difficulties of dealing with the illness of a family member. All the downtrodden faces behind the masks in the ER. And I thought…

Faith is our come along friend.

That morning I drove past a school just as parents were dropping off their children. One of those parents was a father who carried his little one in his arms and then put the child on the ground and held his hand as they walked to school. With a little hick in my throat, I remembered the peaceful and comforting feeling of my own daddy’s hand holding onto me along with the memory of holding my own child’s tiny hand. Hand holding, especially between parent and child, is both a physical and spiritual connection, a connection of comfort and love.   

Both instances struck me in the spirit as I thought of faith as our come along friend. It seems to me that sometimes we want our faith to be a receptacle where we can put our heart aches, sorrows, grief, and worries of life. If we could only pour ourselves out enough, then we could find a place for all that grief to be taken away. 

Some have been taught that all we need to do is believe enough or pray enough and God will take it all away. That is sometimes what we think of when we think of faith, especially when we think of faith in some traditional understandings of life and God. I have heard this explanation of faith and prayer used as a weapon: You are here because your faith and or prayer were not strong enough. 

It may help to think of faith as our come along friend, much like the parent holding the hand of the child. Then we may begin to see our faith is actually in an all-encompassing, all consuming, eternally present God who will never let us go. A relationship born in love and care. A relationship that can never be taken away. 

A faith that feels like an eternal come along friend who walks with us in the valley of the shadow of death as well as walks with us, hand in hand, heart in heart, love in love, in the warmth of the sunshine as well as that shadow. This is a faith that may sustain us through all our days to come as well as the eternity of the time unknown in our minds, but present deep in our spirit: beyond eternity. 

This idea of holding on creases a smile on my face as I picture God as a friend who is always reaching out to hold onto us with a heart born of empathy and the simple blessing of presence.  

May we all know this faith in our hearts so that our spirit may never forget:

Faith is our come along friend. 

“We’ll be friends forever won’t we, Pooh” Asked Piglet

“Even Longer”, said Pooh.