Faith Before All

At that time Jesus left [Samaria] for Galilee.
For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his native place.
When he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him,
since they had seen all he had done in Jerusalem at the feast;
for they themselves had gone to the feast.

Then he returned to Cana in Galilee,
where he had made the water wine.
Now there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum.
When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea,
he went to him and asked him to come down
and heal his son, who was near death.
Jesus said to him,
“Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
The royal official said to him,
“Sir, come down before my child dies.”
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus said to him and left.
While the man was on his way back,
his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live.
He asked them when he began to recover.
They told him,
“The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.”
The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him,
“Your son will live,”
and he and his whole household came to believe.
Now this was the second sign Jesus did
when he came to Galilee from Judea.

F

aith is the first step.  If we do not have faith, nothing else matters.   Without faith we walk along the path of life without help, wandering aimlessly and without any hope of arriving at a worthwhile destination. Faith is believing what you cannot detect with your senses.  In our story today, the man came to Jesus asking for a cure for his servant.   Jesus tells the man that his servant has been cured.  I think at first the man had assumed that Jesus would need to come and see the patient, to determine what the problem was so that He could apply the right fix from his bag of tricks.  But he believed Jesus when he was told that his servant was cured and he went back home.  When he got close to home, he was informed that his servant had gotten better and he found out that it was at the exact time that Jesus said he was cured.

What about us?  Does our faith require an immediate response from Jesus in order for it to remain?  Are we able to pray and believe that we were heard and that our request has been responded to even when it does not appear to our feeble minds that it has?  Our faith depends not on the results we can see but rather on the knowledge that our Lord will do what is best for us in spite of what we ask for. Our faith is in Jesus, not in what we have asked for.  Our faith does not depend on time either.  What we see as the silence of God is the sound of his will working in our life providing the best for his son or daughter.  Faith in Jesus and His ultimate victory is the source of joy and strength in our lives.  We know that no matter what happens in our life that our Lord knows about it and His victory will swallow up any defeats that come to us. 

Faith, in the long run, is the knowledge that God is Love and that His love conquers all.   But we are also taught to keep asking, to be persistent in our prayers, does that diminish the faith we are demonstrating?  Should we not ask only once and then turn and walk away?  Because prayer is the act of communicating with God, we should never be afraid to ask over and over again for what we believe we need.  It could very well be that on one of these occasions we will receive inspiration that what we were asking for is exactly what we do not need and God in His love for us points out, through the circumstances of our life, that He has a better plan and has already begun to execute it.

Faith can move mountains for you even if you live on the plains!