My belief & faith in God (1) is the most valuable thing I have. Period. It underpins everything I am. It affects everything I do. It shapes how I make decisions and frames what I understand as truth. It informs and defines how I relate to the people around me, and most importantly gives me the clearest sense of who I am, why I exist and why life – at the end of the day, is a beautiful gift.
 
My faith is rooted in the humbling acceptance that we are here to be in relationship – with ourselves, each other, and most importantly with God. ‘…The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see…’ (2). I have faith in a God who I can’t see, yet whom I ‘see’ every day in the world around me. I have faith in a first century Jewish teacher who I believe was God in human form, who modelled a way of being that resonates within every human heart, and who profoundly challenged the thinking of his day with wisdom that is more potent now than ever. Jesus summed up the essence of this wisdom by simply inviting us to love God, to love others, and to love ourselves (3). He was brutally killed for his teachings, and as both fully God and fully man died an innocent death. In doing so, something in the fabric of the universe shifted, and in the greatest mystery of them all, He walked through death and out the other side – to make our relationship with Him possible. No longer rooted in our striving to get it right, but simply given – as a gift to be received.

My faith is rooted in this invitation to love well, and has been the truth that has grounded me at every turn – even if it has grown and evolved beyond recognition over the past 40 years. I grew up through a religious (4) childhood that tried to put a man-made lid on the freedom Jesus talked about. Through my early twenties, I wrestled with all kinds of ideologies and beliefs – driven by the need to figure things out on my own terms, and to get myself in order. More recently, I’ve walked through a season where I put everything down – letting go of it all, trusting that whatever was ‘true’ would still remain. Faith in God has little to do with a religion and everything to do with living daily in relationship with Him, joys, questions, doubts and all. Jesus talked about learning ‘… the unforced rhythms of grace…’ (5) – the principles of being fully human that are written into the fabric of creation, into the unfolding laws of science and into the centre of each human heart. They are as necessary as the breath in my lungs, and the ground under my feet. More than carnal animals, or the product of chemical processes in our brains, there is a profound question at the centre of every person, and our ‘spirit’ carries an ache that draws us forward into the fullness of who we were made to be. Spirituality (6) is the practice of listening and giving space for those rhythms to guide our steps, and my faith is a journey to increasingly experience this invitation (and this God) in greater measure.

I have faith in a heaven (God’s ‘song-beyond-the-rhythm’, if you like) that is being pulled more fully into view, day-by-day. Not a place good people go when they die, but a reality that we can all learn to live in here and now, and that continues, somehow, eternally.

Life, the beautiful gift.



1) Let’s face this one up-front, the name ‘God’ is about as loaded-a-title as you can get. Replace it (if you like) with ‘Divine Being’, or ‘Source’, or ‘He’, or ‘She’, or even ‘The Universe’ if it’s helpful. However, I would always argue that the title relates to a person – conscious, fundamentally good, and very interested in doing life with you.
2) Hebrews 11:1-2 (The Message translation of the Bible. Eugene Peterson).
3) Mark 12:30-31 (The Message).
4) Another really loaded word, almost as much as ‘God’ and only fractionally more than ‘Christianity’.
5) Matthew 11:29–30 (The Message), and by far my most grounding line in the Bible.
6) Far more interesting-a-term than religion.