Faith

This morning we all headed to Ramallah to go to Hope Lutheran Church, one of the 6 churches in the ELCJHL (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land). Bishop Younan, the Bishop of the ELCJHL, gave the sermon on a text from Matthew 8, which recounts the story of the Roman centurion who comes to Jesus because his servant is paralyzed. Jesus says that he will come to the centurion's house to heal the servant, but the centurion replies that he is not worthy to have Jesus in his household and that all that Jesus has to do is say he is healed, and it will be done. At this, Jesus commends the centurion for his faith, remarking that his faith is stronger than anyone in Israel that he had seen.
As Bishop Younan talked about the importance of having this kind of faith, I couldn't help but reflect on my own faith. I have been struggling lately and have been dealing with some hard questions. When I am presented with so much suffering on an almost daily basis, when I hear about Gaza and all of the people who have been killed, when I hear stories of despair, when I look into the eyes of the children I work with in the kindergarten and realize that they are destined to a life of imprisonment (in the sense that they cannot leave the West Bank) ...it is hard to have an unfaltering faith. Luckily, faith is not about being doubt-free. I am comforted knowing that questions are an important part of faith. And at the moments when I am struggling the most, it seems that God places a person or an event in my life to remind me that He is here with me. The other day, we learned that a friend's sister, who has been fighting cancer for 7 years, is again in remission. This is a miracle and such a relief. We have been praying for her and for her family for the past 2 months, when we heard about the return of her cancer, and this news really reinforced the power of prayer and the presence of God in this world.