“Have you had a mask made yet,” she asked. Mask? What was she talking about? I hadn’t even seen Phantom of the Opera. Why would a total stranger say such a thing? I guess because she could and because she heard that I faced major facial/cancer surgery the next week.
I knew about the surgery but no one mentioned a mask! Of course, I thought the worst. They must expect me to be totally deformed. They think I’ll scare people. Overwhelming fear erased any tiny miniscule of calm.
Over the years, my faith has swished from nil to full and complete. However on the way to either end, there is middle. That is the moment when we think about whether we will believe God- or not.
Middle faith is just average and average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top.
Joshua 3:17- The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.
Those priests needed to stand in the middle because some of the Israelites had victoriously reached the other side, but a bunch of them still had dry toes.
It’s easy to be faithful when our problems are behind us but when they loom in front of us? That’s another story.
True faith only appears in the middle. We put our toe in, we start across and we don’t know if we will make it…then we get to the middle and find that we are still standing, still holding up….
That is the best feeling!
Some dieters throw away the middle of their Oreo cookies to save a few calories. No middle? Then why eat the cookie? It’s not really an Oreo cookie then, is it? Just like cookies, what we find in the middle is what makes our faith really faith.
Prayer: Lord, give us courage to do more than dip our toes in the water…In Christ’s name. Amen.
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