Sunday morning, November 17, 1996
Renewing the Covenant: What Is Faith?
Hebrews 11:3
By Don Garlington, Ph.D.
Faith is a vital issue, especially to Christians. Yet we
live in a world in which the very talk of faith is seen as
nonsense and absurdity. We live in a rationalistic age in which,
paradoxically, there are those who embrace a sort of
irrationality, a kind of leap into the dark, which they call
faith. As Christians, we must cling to what really is an
alternative between those two positions--the rationalistic and
the leap into the dark--and understand that what we believe is
very much grounded in reality--indeed, in the creation itself.
What Is Truth?
Faith is the heart and the essence of the covenant
relationship. In Hebrews 11 we find perspectives that reach all
the way back into the Old Testament that help us understand
faith.
What is faith? When we ask that, I am reminded of a similar
question which we find in the gospel accounts. Do you remember in
the gospel of John when Jesus stood trial before Pilate? Jesus
spoke of truth, and Pilate, in all of his cynicism and
skepticism, looked at Jesus and asked, "What is truth?"
The great irony is that truth was standing right in front of him.
Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.
Pilate could ask that question because in his day there were
various answers to the question, "What is truth?" For
the rationalist, for the scientific philosophers, truth was only
what could be seen, heard, smelled, and put in the mouth. To such
people, the elements of earth, air, fire and water were all that
there was. There is no soul. There was nothing beyond that which
was tangible. We gain the impression from the Scripture that
Pilate embraced this point of view.
But in the first century there were also what were known as
mystery religions. The Dionysian cult, for example, was an
outstanding instance of a mystery religion. It included a process
whereby one entered into the secrets or mysteries of the deity by
stages, until finally you became a full initiate and all of the
mysteries of the cult were revealed to you. If we asked someone
involved in a mystery religion or a mystery cult, "What is
truth?" we would get an irrational kind of answer. The
person would say, "We don't really know what truth is, but
we are seeking it. We are attempting to have the divine spark of
energy ignited in ourselves, and from there go on in an attempt
to determine what the truth is." It is irrational because
there is no ready answer at hand.
Pilate no doubt also knew about the Jewish view of truth. The
Jewish alternative said that truth was to be found in the
creation because there is a God who is a Creator. Truth links us
with the Creator because it is something that we can think about,
something we can grasp with our mental faculties. It goes beyond
that which can be touched and felt.
What Is Faith?
In the same way, we can pose the question, "What is
faith?" And once again there are various alternatives. The
rationalistic explanation, for example, says essentially that
there is no such thing as faith. A rationalist might say,
"If you people want to believe these things, that is fine.
If it helps you to get through life, if it is some kind of a balm
and salve for the sores of this life, then that is okay. But as
for me, I don't believe that there is any such thing as
faith." Rationalism believes only in what can be seen. To a
rationalist, truth is only that which can be demonstrated with
the scientific method.
We also have our modern mystery religions, which swing to the
opposite end of the spectrum. The New Age movement is essentially
Oriental religion and philosophy which has come into the Western
world. If you ask New Age adherents what faith is, they will give
various answers depending on what aspect of the New Age movement
they are into. But again, their definition of faith will be
something that is essentially irrational, something that is not
really articulated. Over against those two we have the biblical
alternative.
There is an irony in asking the question, "What is
faith?" because our generation asks that very question. What
we have to do is to say that faith comes in the context of
trouble and uncertainty, because faith seeks to be something that
assures people. Faith gives us assurance, reason to believe, and
reason to hope. Yet when we proclaim and attempt to define faith,
we say that faith is meaningless apart from a context of trouble
and uncertainty. That is the irony of it.
Because of this connection with trouble and uncertainty, the
world asks "What is faith?" with a tone of cynicism in
its voice. But for us the irony is that the very character of
faith is defined by certain things. It is defined by present
uncertainty, by trouble, and by the necessity of perseverance
until a better time. This is the biblical alternative, meaning
that from the beginning of time, from the time of Adam's fall to
the present day, by definition faith presupposes struggle and
testing.
Someone may object to this and ask, "What about the first
verse of Hebrews 11, 'Faith is the assurance of things hoped for
and the conviction of things not seen'? Doesn't this connect
faith with assurance?" Yes it does, but here we must examine
the context of Hebrews.
The Context of Faith
The author of Hebrews was writing to people who were ready to
give up because faith was being contradicted by sight. For ages
they had been used to seeing the high priest take an animal in
hand, slay it as a sacrifice offered upon the altar and pronounce
forgiveness of sins on the basis of slaying of the animal. The
rivers of blood that flowed throughout the period of the Mosaic
era are proof positive that people had become accustomed to a
very tangible expression of religion of the forgiveness of sins.
Indeed, the old covenant ministered to that dimension of human
nature, especially to the flesh.
But these people had embraced Christianity, in which there is a
priest who cannot be seen. Christians know that Jesus has offered
a sacrifice but they do not see it. Jesus is living at God's
right hand, interceding for every one of us, and yet we cannot
see him and have no tangible conception of what he is doing at
the present time.
When you look at it from that point of view, doesn't faith become
problematic? If someone asks you, "Why do you believe what
you do?" I am sure you would be pressed at times to answer
such questions. There are all types of proofs or evidences. Look
at the creation. Look at the Scriptures, with all of their
harmony and unity, and the fascination they hold for those who
study at any depth. We engage in the science of apologetics in
attempting to demonstrate that there are reasons for faith. And
yet, after you have gone through all of that, people are not
convinced, are they? They still want to know why you believe.
You see, our ultimate answer must be, "It is because the
Christ is alive, and because his Holy Spirit is not simply an
entity or a power, but a living person who resides within the
believer." It is for that reason that we say that we believe
these things. But that is not very convincing to those who don't
believe, is it? In fact, it is suspect to unbelievers. And
because of this you can understand how people in their skepticism
look at high profile people who claim to be Christians and yet
live questionable lives and say, "Well, Christians are all
hypocrites to begin with. I don't go to church because the
churches are filled with hypocrites," not taking into
account their own various aspects of hypocrisy.
Failing to Enter God's Rest
The underlying issue in Hebrews, and really the underlying
issue for us at times, is the danger of failing to enter in the
sabbath rest. These people were in danger of failing to enter
into that which is future rest for believers. And so when the
writer speaks of faith being "the assurance of things hoped
for and the conviction of things not seen," he is referring
to the future, to the inheritance. In fact, the epistle to the
Hebrews begins on this note of the inheritance, saying that Jesus
sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, which
signifies that he entered into his sabbath rest. He is exalted to
a position at God's right hand, and yet his labor is over. And in
that very setting Christ is called the heir of all things. In
Hebrews 2:5-9, the writer goes on to say that what Adam failed to
attain to--the full subduing of the earth--has come under the
majestic dominion of Christ. And in the case of Christ, it is not
simply the earth which has been subdued, but the universe as
well.
The book of Hebrews starts on this futuristic note as it connects
with the past. We must realize that we live in a period of
overlap between two ages. The old creation starts at a certain
point with the fall of Adam and runs up to a certain period of
time, and then the new creation begins with the first coming of
Christ. But the old does not fall completely away immediately.
The two continue to run concurrently and overlap until the old
finally falls away at the second coming of Christ and only the
future remains.
We are in the period between the already and the not yet. And the
recipients of the letter to the Hebrews experienced the already.
They had left, as it were, the house of bondage, but they had not
come into the land of promise. They found themselves in the
wilderness. As people who find themselves in the wilderness
sometimes do, they wondered, "What are we doing here in the
first place?" Time and again they said of Moses, "You
know, this fellow led us out here and now he's disappeared. We
don't know where he is. For all we know, he has gone back to
Egypt and he is having a nice time beside a warm fire somewhere
while we are in this stinking desert." Even though we might
not precisely phrase the question in just such terms, haven't we
also wondered, "Is all this worth it? Have we made the right
choice to follow Christ? Was our decision right?"
Faith in God and His Promise
The answer is yes, because faith is the assurance that what we
have undertaken apart from sight is going to be fulfilled by
sight one of these days. Notice that Hebrews 11:3 has the
creation as its main point of reference. Do you realize that Adam
was expected to have faith even before he fell? In the case of
Adam, everything he saw around him was conducive to his
faith--the paradise of God, the garden, the earth that he was to
subdue to the glory of the Creator and for his own
good--everything was rooted in the creation itself.
What happened when Adam fell? He broke the covenant. You see, we
may speak of violating the covenant by individual sins, but we
don't break the covenant unless we turn back and forsake the God
of the covenant. But that is precisely what Adam did. That sounds
startling to some, because some believe that Adam was immediately
forgiven and redeemed, and we will see him in heaven. I don't
think so. Why? Paul speaks of two men who head up the whole of
human history: the first Adam and the last Adam, who is Jesus
Christ. Those who are in the first Adam die, but those who are in
the second, or last Adam, shall all be made alive. Adam broke the
covenant and fell away. Adam was the first apostate.
Adam was expected to believe in the context of testing. He was
being put to the test. He was to subdue and populate the earth,
all of which was conducive to his own self-gratification. But
when it came to the point where there was a contest of wills
between his will and that of the Creator, Adam would not obey. He
had been presented with an alternate explanation of reality, and
he chose one over the other. He broke faith. He was expected to
believe, and yet, at a certain point in time, Adam stopped
believing.
What was Adam's faith supposed to involve? Believing that God
would do something bigger and better than what Adam was
experiencing at that time. We do not have the time in this study,
but one can develop quite a notion of the Sabbath rest. God
entered into his rest in Genesis 2:1-2. Then he invited Adam and
Eve to fulfill their work and enter into his rest with him. They
were not able to do so because of the impossibility of the
mandate. But even so, what we call heaven is nothing other than
the sabbath rest which has come into its own. That is why the
writer of Hebrews said that there remains a sabbath rest for the
people of God.
The Struggle of Faith
All of this reintroduces the basic question, "What is
faith?" When I was in seminary, the president of the
seminary told our class that if we did not know three Latin
theological terms for faith, we could not graduate. These terms,
used by theologians especially of the seventeenth century, are notitia
, assensus and fiducia . Notitia is
knowledge, meaning the kind of knowledge one has of an object.
Assensus means that one assents to the truth of that object of
knowledge. Fiducia is faith or trust in the strict sense of the
term.
I want to take issue with that definition, but not because it is
wrong. In fact, I am quite sure that it is right. The only
problem is that when faith is presented in the Bible, it is not
really presented in a way that breaks it down into three
categories of knowledge, assent and trust The Bible presents
faith in terms of something which is living and dynamic. We see
faith as a struggle, a fight.
Adam was expected to guard the Garden of Eden. When you read the
creation account in the Hebrew, you find that the writer uses a
verb that means to guard, which implies that there were evil
powers trying to intrude themselves upon the creation paradise.
Adam failed in the mandate to guard the garden and the forces of
evil invaded. Evil is a great mystery, and we do not know why God
permits it, but it is permitted. And so the first Adam could not
be what he was meant to be because he failed to guard the garden.
He failed to exercise a living and dynamic faith.
Faith as found in the Bible is always fluid. There is an ebb and
flow to it. Any time you construct a model of biblical theology,
you have to let the model breathe. If you have solid, rigid
lines, and hermetically sealed containers--one aspect of faith
here and another aspect of faith there, and another aspect of
faith there--that does not do justice to the dynamic of the
language itself. Faith is fluid, and we cannot make a sharp
distinction between various aspects of it. All aspects of faith
stand together. And instead of three dimensions--knowledge,
assent and fiducia--we find there are two things that
characterize faith. Where you find the one, you must find the
other.
Trust and Faithfulness
The first aspect of faith is what we call faith in the sense
of trust. It is trusting in God the Creator, the God of the
covenant, and believing that he will do what he says he is going
to do and believing that he is able to accomplish what he
promises. That is the way that we normally understand faith. But
hand in hand with that there is always the notion of
faithfulness, meaning if we have faith, we will be faithful at
the same time.
Our problems in translating the words for faith is that in
Hebrew, and in the Greek as well, there is no one word for faith
in the active sense alone, in the sense of trust. The Hebrew word
especially stands for a total concept of constancy and firmness,
with the root meaning of being firm. To be firm is to be reliable
and hold up our end of the covenant. Those who believe in the God
of the Bible are always not only exercising what we call faith,
but also producing faithfulness.
Therefore, we can speak of faith as being fidelity, constancy,
firmness, and confidence, as well as reliance, trust, and belief.
Where you find the one aspect, you must always find the other.
The Faith of Abraham
The writer of Hebrews reached back into the Old Testament to
present Abraham as an exemplar of faith. If we go back to the
Abraham narrative as found in the book of Genesis and examine
what the writer of Hebrews says about Abraham, we will see that
he follows the chronological sequence of Abraham's story as found
in Genesis 12 and following.
In Hebrews 11:8 we read, "By faith Abraham, when called to
go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed
and went, even though he did not know where he was going."
The reference is to Genesis 12, which shows us that Abraham's
sojourn of faith began in chapter 12, not chapter 15. In Genesis
12:1-3 God spoke to Abraham, "Go from your country and your
kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you,
and I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and
make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless
those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse, and by
you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." There,
of course, is the beginning of the Abrahamic covenant.
What was Abraham's family like before he left them? Were they
good, church-going, fundamentalist Christians? No, they were
idolaters, as we read in Joshua 24:2. In fact, there is a Jewish
tradition that adds to the scriptural account and says that
Abraham became so incensed with the idolatry of his father and
his family that he burned down their house of idolatry and
stomped off to make a new beginning. That is a bit of
embellishment but it essentially gives the right picture, because
when Abraham was called to leave home, he was called to leave
everything behind that he had known--everything familiar,
everything that gave him security--friends, family, possessions
and all the rest. The reason he was to make such a radical break
was because of the idolatry. Abraham's sojourn of faith from that
point onward was to be a new creation.
A New Beginning
It is interesting to notice how the book of Genesis is
structured. First there is the creation account. The first man is
Adam and he falls. Then God starts over again in the person of
Abel, who is slain by his brother, who is of the seed of the
serpent rather than the seed of the woman, his own mother. Later
on it is Seth, and, of course, the godly line of Seth and the
line of Cain merge at a certain point, and this becomes the
background for the flood. But then God begins again when he calls
Noah. Then he begins again when he calls Abraham.
The ancient rabbinic commentators were able to see that all the
way through Genesis there is a series of new beginnings. At one
time there was physical chaos in Genesis 1 from which the cosmos
emerged when God said, "Let there be light." But after
the fall of Adam, there is a new chaos which engulfs the planet,
the chaos of sin--the moral chaos that you and I are very much a
part of at the present moment.
When we are converted to Jesus Christ we are told to leave behind
our idolatrous past and start again. That can be painful. When
people make Christian professions in some cultures, it is as if
they have just signed their own death warrants. In some
countries, as soon as some people make any kind of Christian
profession and are baptized, they are marked. In conservative
Jewish homes a mock funeral is sometimes held for those who
convert from Judaism to Christianity. And it is especially
poignant that in the case of Jewish people who become Christians,
the first question put to them is, "Why do you want to
forsake your own people? Why would you do that, turn your back on
your own family?" Only those who have gone through such an
experience can appreciate the force of the temptation to turn
back.
By Faith Abraham Left
But Abraham did not turn back. He left home. Now, in those
days, when a person left home, he left his whole family
relationship behind because in those days everyone lived
together. We think it is advantageous for young couples, once
they have married, to move out of their parents' homes and have
their own apartment somewhere. But that was not the case in the
time of Abraham. And so what Abraham was doing, effectively, was
renouncing his family. Yet he was compelled to do so because they
were idolaters and he had entered into a new creation.
Have you ever moved away from home? When I was thirty-five, my
family left New Jersey to go to England, and we experienced
culture shock. We came to understand what it means to be divided
by a common language, among other things, as we lived in the
north of England where they speak Geordie. We had to strain our
ears to understand any conversation. We did not have electric or
gas heat. Every day I had to go out to the coal bin, put coal in
the scuttle, and carry it to the fire. After we burned the fire
in the morning, we had to riddle the thing, get all the hot ash
and throw it outside into the ash can. We did that in all kinds
of grisly weather. When we finally got a TV, I started watching
anything that would remind me of home--things that I never would
have watched before. I even watched "The Dukes of
Hazzard" because it reminded me of my upbringing in
Arkansas. I was grasping for something familiar.
Faith involves the renunciation of that which is familiar and of
that which is idolatrous. And from a certain point of view we can
define faith as perseverance--perseverance in the covenant
relationship with God. Do you remember how the writer of Hebrews
was surveying the history of Israel? In Hebrews 3 and 4 he said
that the people of Israel failed to enter the land because of
their disobedience, and then a couple of verses later he said it
was because of their unbelief. Unbelief is disobedience and
disobedience is unbelief, because in the Bible, and I would say
in Jewish tradition as well, disobedience is not simply breaking
some minute aspect of the law. It means to forsake the law, the
covenant, and the God of the covenant.
Obedience is the opposite. It means to embrace the covenant and
the God of the covenant, in spite of the fact that the God of the
covenant sometimes seems to be giving us a pretty rough ride. The
life of the covenant can be tough sledding. At times we may even
cry out the old rabbinic prayer, "Master of the universe,
what are you doing?" because it seems that there is no rhyme
or reason to it. But we must persevere in it.
Faith in God's Promise
At the very beginning of Abraham's pilgrimage of faith, his
obedience in embracing the covenant sets the tone for everything
which is to follow. In Genesis 15 Abraham was told that he was
going to have an heir, his own child. But then Abraham began to
wonder whether that would really happen. Now this is a passage we
normally associate with Abraham's conversion, and especially as
we understand Paul in a certain way when he refers to Genesis
15:6 in Romans 4. But it really isn't, because the writer of
Hebrews refers back to Genesis 12 when he says that Abraham
obeyed when he was called to go out to a land which he didn't
know.
We read of the promise of Isaac, Abraham's seed, in Genesis 15,
beginning with verse 1: "After this, the word of the LORD
came to Abram in a vision: 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your
shield, your very great reward.' But Abram said, 'O Sovereign
LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one
who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?' And Abram
said, 'You have given me no children; so a servant in my
household will be my heir.'" Abraham was becoming very
impatient at this point in time, was he not?
You see, we misunderstand Paul when he says at the end of Romans
4 that Abraham hoped against hope if we think that Abraham did
not become very anxious at times. He expressed that anxiety,
saying to God, "You haven't given me a thing, and I have no
choice but to take a slave and make him as my heir." But
what did God do? "Then the word of the LORD came to him:
'This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own
body will be your heir.' He took him outside and said, 'Look up
at the heavens and count the stars--if indeed you can count
them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Abram
believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as
righteousness."
This phrase "to reckon to him as righteousness" was
discussed by Dr. Meredith Kline, formerly of Westminster
Seminary, in an article in the Westminster Journal .
Dr. Kline said the way that we really ought to translate and
understand this verse is that Abraham said "Amen" to
God's covenant. "Abraham believed the Lord," and
according to Kline, that should be translated, "Abraham said
the 'Amen' to God's covenant." I agree with Dr. Kline. This
is not the first time that Abraham believed, and yet his faith
was renewed and therefore, God considered him to be a righteous
person because of the renewal of his faith.
Theology of Creation
What did God focus Abraham's attention upon? It was the same
thing that the writer of Hebrews fixes our attention upon--the
creation. What was Abraham's question to God? "You haven't
given me a thing. I am old. My wife is not capable of bearing
children." But God, in essence, said, "Abraham, just
step outside for a moment, if you will." Now, I have never
been able to see the stars apart from a certain amount of light
pollution. I understand that I would have to go to the remotest
reaches of earth in order to see the sky the way that ancient
people could. But I can imagine seeing the stars in all of their
dazzling glory. And what did God tell Abraham to do? "Start
counting."
What was God saying? First, he wanted to draw Abraham's attention
to the sheer vastness of the creation. Even with the naked eye,
even with the light pollution, there are so many stars that we
cannot begin to count them. And with the Hubble telescope, we
have learned that there are so many galaxies that we could never
count them. We can only make rough estimations.
Not only that, just think of what a star is. It is basically a
self-generating light. It is not dependent upon anything else for
life and sustenance. Rather, it creates life and light. It is not
dependent upon any other created entity. You see, there is a
theology to be found in the stars. I know this can be carried to
an extreme and one man wrote a treatise that called, "The
Solar System Spiritualized," in which he said there was
something theologically nuanced about every planet in the solar
system. But there is a theology to be found in the stars and
heavenly bodies, and in the case of a star, in its particular,
self-generating life. And where does a star shine? Against the
backdrop of absolute darkness, at least from our perspective. It
reminds us of Genesis 1, does it not? As God said, "Let
there be light," and light came flooding into the darkness,
the stars in themselves are self-contained symbols and images of
the God who is.
So God reasons with Abraham. He was telling him that the One who
could make all of the stars was the One who could give him a son.
In fact, if God create all that we see around us, it would be a
simple thing for that God to create a son even in the case of a
man who was old and a woman whose womb had been shut all of her
life.
Creation and Faith
Have you ever struggled in your faith? On many occasions, when
I have wondered whether I have believed the right thing--whether
it is absurdity or the truth--the thing that always brings me
back to square one is the creation itself. I know that the
creation does not on its own terms prove which God we ought to
worship, but it certainly does support the notion that there is a
Creator. To think that the world and especially our own bodies
and psyches are the products of chance is, as someone has said,
to believe that a tornado could come through a junk yard and
piece together a 747. It just does not happen. It would be like a
bunch of monkeys banging on a word processor and producing
"Hamlet."
Are you struggling in terms of the way the providence of God has
been treating you? Let me encourage you, the next time the sky is
clear, to go out at night, look up and see how many stars you can
count. When you do that, you will realize that the God who made
all of that can solve all our problems, and he can do it in such
a way as to reassure us that the beginning is a signpost to the
end. And you can turn that around and say that the end is a
signpost to the beginning.
What does that mean? We speak of eschatology, the study of the
last things, in our theological jargon. But in the Bible, when
you come to very end, you are sent back to the beginning, because
the end is the restoration of the beginning. And so, not only is
there an eschatology, but also there is a protology--the doctrine
of a beginning--because the beginning and the end match one
another.
So when we cannot see the forest for the trees, when we wonder if
we have started on the right course to begin, when we watch
scientific programs in which the evolutionary point of view is
presented with such plausibility and sophistication that we
wonder what in the world we are doing, we can go back to the
creation itself and think about the magnificence and intricacy of
it. And starting with that point we can discern that not only in
the beginning did God create the heavens and the earth, but
"in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was with God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made
that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light
of men" (John 1:1-4). The light is still shining in the
darkness, even though the darkness does not apprehend or
comprehend it. Despite all the attempts of darkness to extinguish
the light, it will never be put out.
If, then, we ask, "What is faith?" we must answer,
"It is trust in God." Yet it is also faithfulness on
our part directed to the God who has made all things and the one
who has made all things anew in the person of Jesus Christ.
Do You Have Faith?
Do you have faith? Or are you like the rationalists to whom
there is no such thing as faith? If you are, then you live a very
hollow and shallow existence. You have a one-dimensional
existence and cannot begin to comprehend and give an explanation
for all the physical phenomena that you encounter day by day,
even though you do just that, in a grand state of inconsistency
and contradiction.
Maybe you are an irrationalist. Maybe you have flirted with
Eastern religion and philosophy, the New Age movement and such.
There are a lot of modern celebrities who have bought into the
New Age movement. But I pity them. Why? They have everything on a
silver platter in front of them in terms of what the world can
offer and yet they do not have a clue when it comes to ultimate
reality. May we pity them, pray for them and present the gospel
to them.
If you do not have faith, I invite you to faith. You may say,
"How do I get faith? How do I lay my hands on this entity
that you are calling belief and faithfulness?" As ironic as
it may seem, you ask for it. You must ask because you are not
capable of creating it on your own terms. Faith is the gift of
God. When Paul affirms that the whole of our redemption is not of
works but rather, it is the gift of God, lest anyone should
boast, he is affirming that even faith is God's gift (Eph.
2:8,9).
Why is faith is appointed as the means of salvation and the
forgiveness of sins? Faith restores the relationship of trust
which Adam had with the Creator in the beginning. In our own
persons we become Adams and Eves--latter day, eschatological
Adams and Eves--because of the gift of faith. So we must pray for
faith and once we have it, we must pray for perseverance in
faith.
We have every reason to believe and to press on, because the
beginning points to the end, and in the end we return to the
paradise of the beginning. I can think of nothing that is
greater, more majestic, and more expansive than that. Amen.
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