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Faith is a Gift “Faith is a gift, but the will has a great deal to do with it,” wrote Flannery O'Connor in a letter to a young man struggling with his faith (The Habit of Being, p. 452). “The loss of it is basically a failure of appetite, assisted by sterile intellect. Some people when they lose their faith in Christ, substitute a swollen faith in themselves…let me tell you this: faith comes and goes. It rises and falls like the tides of an invisible ocean. If it is presumptuous to think that faith will stay with you forever, it is just as presumptuous to think that unbelief will…if you find in yourself the least return of a desire for faith…go back to the Church with a light heart and without the conscience-raking to which you are probably subject. Subtlety is the curse of man. It is not found in the deity.” As this great writer (who struggled for relationship with God) suggests, our journey of faith is neither linear nor is it likely to be constant. As we work in our daily callings, we must assert our will for faith. God is the one constant in the equation. God is always there, the alpha and the omega. God calls each of us. But the response each of us gives will be different. The important thing is for the response to be authentic. For some, it may be more authentic to slow down, to go for a walk in solitude, to swim in the ocean and see the wonder of God's world for the first time in years. For others, the authentic response may be to take a risk that you never believed possible. The good news is that God, who creates us and loves us, enables us to make the right response at the right time. When this occurs, the spirit of God breaks into our ordinary lives and we are reassured, once again, that faith matters.
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