Having Faith in Hard Times

Faith is scary, but sometimes it’s all we’ve got. A climber fell off a cliff, and as he tumbled down, he caught hold of a small branch, “Help! Is there anybody up there?” he shouted.

A majestic voice boomed through the gorge: “I will help you, my son, but first you must have faith in me.”

“Yes, yes, I trust you!” cried the man.

“Let go of the branch,” boomed the voice.

There was a long pause, and the man shouted up again, “Is there anybody ELSE up there?”

Perhaps the most unprecedented thing about the past six months (since the fires – remember them?) is the number of times the word “unprecedented” has been used. I am normally quite cynical about alarmism, but there is no doubt that the past three months in the world, and six months in Australia, has been the most destabilising and unsettling period in living memory for almost all of us.

We have fallen off the figurative cliff and are each clinging to whatever lifeline we can find. The actions of Governments and community, and especially those of our College leaders and teachers, have provided great lifelines, but we cannot cling to them forever.

We are now at a place where we need to find the “one who is out there” and then “let go of the branch” to take his or her hand. We need to have faith.

Faith is not blind, it is not living in a fantasy world, that is delusion. Faith is weighing up all that is known and then trusting this knowledge to give you the courage to launch into the unknown.

In religious terms this is about absorbing all that we know about the story of God, adding to it what we can’t prove but is consistent with what we can, and as a consequence trusting what the Scriptures teach about the way we should live our lives and the purpose we have been given. It is commonly expressed in the Christian aphorism “Let go and let God”.

But faith is not only a religious thing, it can be played out in our daily lives. For our Somerset students it is a matter of remembering how well their teachers taught them and prepared them, of how the College demonstrated its care for and commitment to them BD (before disruption) and using this memory to give them confidence and quell anxiety about this new era. As they move away from the lifeline of online learning they need to let go of that and grasp the new plan that is laid out to ensure their learning and success.

Similarly in family life and in business we must move to a new normal, a second set of drastic adjustments in just a few months. To do it successfully we must call out “Is anybody there?” and when we hear the voice that commands our trust – whether it be spiritual, psychological, social, entrepreneurial or emotional – we must let go of the branch we hold and reach out.

Yes, faith is scary, but it is far better than clinging to a branch that is almost certain to break.