How Can ‘Faith, Hope, and Love’ grow in my life?
“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
- 1 CORINTHIANS 13:13
Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash
There comes a time in life when we experience the reality that neither the resources of the present moment nor the joys of the past are quite enough to keep us going. Sure, we eat, breathe, and move about, but we feel that faith, hope, and love in our lives are as the feint morning embers from the evening’s fire.
When the present is hard and in no way enough for you, what do you do?
In his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, Jewish psychologist Victor Frankl writes about his experience from inside the Auschwitz concentration camp, the worst possible present moment. Here, distraction and denial come at a high cost and are guaranteed to fail. Sometimes it is said of religious people, “they struggle to cope with life, so opt for a life of God and faith.” On the other hand, Frankl’s observation was that those inside the camp with faith in something ‘outside’ (of both the camp, and the present moment) were the ones most able to hold onto life. Not the eating, breathing, and moving about life, something beyond.
Friedrich Nietzsche, a man thoroughly opposed to the God that Christians profess, puts what Frankl is speaking of as so; “he who has a why can bear almost any how.” Whoever you are, whether associated with Jesus, curious about him from a distance, or follow another path, Nietzsche’s ‘meaning’ challenge applies to your life. Frankl’s observation about many of his generation, and I’m sure many of ours, was that “people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.” There is nothing to trust, nothing to have faith in, and therefore no resources when the present is not enough.
For any who are tired of the shallow ‘whys’ that just don’t seem to be energising our ‘how’, Jesus says, ‘man does not live by bread alone’, ‘but by every word that comes from above.’ Here-and-now (the ‘secular’), flesh-and-blood, we don’t and can’t have all that we need to keep faith, hope, and love abiding. The conditions are too harsh, the road too long. Yet, there is more than meets the eye, and Jesus’ redemptive work in this sorrowful, dark, and tearful world is one everyone is invited to be a part of, no matter how hard our past or present. He has promised that in Him, death (the greatest threat to ‘why’, faith, hope, and love) will die.
As we continue, or try for the first time, to put imperfect but real faith (trust) in Jesus’ words for our lives and for the world, always finding new and deeper insight about his help, we can learn to wait in hope, and live lives in love. That is how faith, hope, and love can begin to abide.
When the present is hard and in no way enough for you, God through Jesus has made a way for you. It is said of him in the New Testament book of ‘Hebrews’, “He (Jesus) was like them (mankind) in every way, so that he might help them.” Some ideas are best said quietly and not fit for every moment, but perhaps the experience of the present’s inadequacy can become a severe mercy in your life, pointing you home to the one who cares and can help.