Reflection
on
Faith
“Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.) Faith is the ability to make a way out of no way. Faith is the catalyst for fighting for what is right. Faith is the fuel that helps a person overcome life’s most crippling element…fear. Fire is the opposite of water, hot is the opposite of cold, good is the opposite of evil, and faith is the opposite of fear. “The secret of life is to have no fear.” (Kwame Nkrumah) The world’s most heroic women and men have a common thread, and the one common thread is the fact that they believed in their cause to the extreme that fear was eliminated. The element of fear became extinct in their spirits. Fear was replaced with faith. Their faith was so strong that even the fear of death was irrelevant. Their faith was so strong that they could look the “Grim Reaper” straight in the face and give ol’ death a hearty handshake. Faith became a personal bodyguard in their life’s mission. The heroes and she-roes of the world possessed a powerful force of faith that extinguished the destructive fires of fear. “True believers have no fear.” (Marvin Gaye) It is possible that the key to their faith is the principle belief that nothing or no one could break them. Those who have been victorious in their causes have, like anyone else, stumbled and made mistakes. You win some and then you lose some. You lose some and then you win some. Unfortunately, the spirit of faith doesn’t protect you from making mistakes, stumbling and even falling down. But neither does the spirit of faith allow you to stay down and muddle and then drown in your errors and shortcomings. The spirit of faith quickly picks you up and dusts you off and sets you back on course again. In fact, those persons who are consumed by faith understand that stumbling is not falling. Those persons consumed with the spirit of faith understand a defeat suffered in one battle doesn’t mean you have lost the entire war. They take their errors and profit from them. “Once you have fallen into the water, you’re not scared.” (Russian Proverb) Those who have made the history books, and the valiant many that did not, all have had supreme faith as their guide to victory.
In order to practice and incorporate faith in the journey of life, one has to have the key and essential ingredients of optimism and positive thinking in order for faith to overcome fear. When personal storms approach, we must understand that “this too shall pass.” Faith is rooted in optimism, confidence, and conviction. In fact, when personal storms approach a person who is consumed with the spirit of faith, because they are strongly rooted in faith, just like a tree, that person can withstand the storm. Storms and problems can’t last forever. Problems, like storms, come and go. According to the Bible, it rained forty days and forty nights. But on the forty-first day it had to stop. On the forty-first day the sun came out. On the forty-first day the sky wasn’t cloudy but was as blue as the ocean. It is the spirit of faith that keeps you focused not on the forty days of rain, but on the forty-first day in which the sun will shine again. It is the spirit of faith the helps you endure. It is the spirit of faith that helps you understand that stressful times are only temporary. Even within the word “crises” is the word “rise.” It is the spirit of faith that helps you understand that after every storm comes the sun and, if you are fortunate, an occasional rainbow. “Every joy will follow in grief’s footsteps.” (African Proverb)
“Keep smiling with the world even though your mother is dead. Smile with the world and the world will smile back at you; be vexed with the world, and the world will be vexed with you. Nobody is obligated to you to make you happy, so don’t carry your sorrow to the world and on your sleeves. Keep them to yourself and get out of them the best way you can.” (Marcus Garvey) When a house is on fire, firefighters logically use water to put the blaze out. Water is the remedy to fire. Because water is the exact opposite of fire, it is able to snuff out the blaze. Just like water conquers fire, positive conquers negative, optimism conquers pessimism. “To destroy an undesirable rate of mental vibration, concentrate on the opposite vibration to the one to be suppressed.” (Temt Tchaas) Negativity can be like quicksand where, before you know it, you are totally consumed and over your head in pessimism and self-sympathy. Don’t wallow in your sorrow! We must make life’s stumbling blocks into life’s stepping stones! Begin to look at the glass of water as half full instead of half empty. Look at the sky full of clouds as partly sunny instead of partly cloudy. Faith is using today’s crisis for tomorrow’s growth. Faith is finding a way of making glasses of lemonade out of the lemons life has given you. In fact, faith is taking the lemons of life and opening a lemonade stand — and then starting up a lemonade franchise! During times that are really rough and rocky, when life even gives you defecation, you must make fertilizer out of it! “To an optimist, every weed is a flower; to a pessimist, every flower is a weed.” (Proverb of Finland) “The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist, the hole.” (McLandburgh Wilson)
“A radiant future is dawning on our horizon.” (Patrice Lumumba) Cup your hands and try to contain a small amount of water in them. Regardless of how tight you may hold your hands, sooner or later the water will begin to seep through. This water and hand scenario is symbolic of the victory of good over evil. Faith is like that water, because regardless of the obstacles, and regardless of the rigid and unyielding hands that try to contain the water, victory, like the water, will soon filter through. “The positive way of thinking must win. Good over evil. We’re confident of victory.” (Bob Marley) The spirit of faith tells us that, regardless of the obstacles, nothing can stop us. Faith fuels confidence. Confidence eliminates the word “if” and replaces it with the word “when.” “They do not talk of if they will win, but only of when.” (Kwame Nkrumah) A superb athlete, regardless of the sport she or he participates in, exudes confidence. A star basketball player with no time on the clock, with the championship in the balance, walks up to the free-throw line with faith. It is faith that fuels the confidence of the shooter who sinks the winning basket. She or he does not step to the free-throw line wondering, “What if I miss?” The confident athlete walks right up to the line with faith and not fear. The confident athlete steps up to the line visualizing the champagne popping of the locker room celebration. This type of attitude and mentality is applicable on a basketball court as well as on life’s battlefield. In order to be successful, faith must be the foundation which your life’s quest is built upon. “I leave you faith. Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. Faith in God is the greatest power, but great, too, is faith in oneself.” (Mary McLeod Bethune)
In his hit song, Bobby McFerrin sang, “Don’t worry…be happy.” Life is too short and the grave is too long to worry. When driving down a street, i noticed a billboard outside of a church that said, “When you worry...