The Time for Faith

“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Faith pleases God (Heb. 11:6). But here’s what I’m (slowly) learning. Faith is only needed – and only possible – when I can’t see the outcome. Once I have the answer to my question or the solution to my dilemma or the blessing I was asking for, I have the “cash in hand.” The time for faith has passed.

So in every uncertainty there’s a window of opportunity, a time frame in which we have the opportunity to please God by showing faith. Poet Fay Inchfawn, writing about how the spirit of Jacob revived when he saw his sons returning from Egypt with wagons laden with provision, put it this way:

…Oh, man who walked by sight.
You should have known the darkest hour of night
Is just before the earliest streak of gray.
Your wagons, all the time, were on their way!...

And she turns the lesson on us…

Oh, sorrowful soul! Trust just a little longer.
Who knows, but o’er your bare, brown hill
The wagons may be coming nearer still?
Give faith a chance. For soon, how soon it may
Give place to sight; and then never again
Will you have opportunity to show
That you can trust, albeit you cannot know.

What is testing your faith right now? The wagons are on their way, and when they arrive the opportunity to demonstrate faith in that situation will be passed. Today is your chance to demonstrate faith in God, to please Him with your trust, and to believe that He exists and is the Rewarder of those who earnestly, persistently seek Him.

However feebly, however imperfectly, as much as you are able by His grace... trust now!