Ye of Little Faith

Greetings dear readers. The holiday season is upon us, and I hope this post finds you in good company & happy times. As much as I want to flush out a new design for the blog, part of my journey towards life improvements (health & office for late arrivals), includes getting back to regular blog posts.

I haven’t quite come up with a weekly theme (Firgs is spot on with daily scheduled themes), but I am going to try to get a post schedule down. I have been able to do that on Twitter, and if you’re following me then you’ve probably seen I post daily Adobe tips at 9AM & 9PM Monday through Friday.

In the upcoming weeks, I’m going to share how I’m getting my house in order, and that will include a behind the scenes peek here.

Now that we’ve gotten business out of the way, I wanted to share today’s lesson from church. Actually, I wouldn’t do Jeff Manning’s sermon service by trying to break it down (subscribe to Big God Podcast on iTunes), but it did speak to me. It was Mark 6:6 that got my attention. Jeff talked about how Jesus returned to Nazareth, and here he stood amongst folks in their unbelief.

To me the sermon was a testament to faith in the midst of crisis. As we look at the current state of the world, things are lookin’ a bit glum. Here in the U.S. we are perhaps looking at the end of the industrial era as we know it.

As I sat in church this morning, my heart weighed heavy. It’s hard to empathize with the plight of others when you’re facing you’re own adversity. Maybe it’s easy for some, but I find myself feeling guilty whenever I feel bad about my situations. Guilty you ask? Well sure, I know that despite my crisis, there’s someone else who has it worse. Maybe it’s a human defense mechanism, “Well, yeah we’re short on funds, but did you here about Bob – he got fired today.”

Really, I think it comes down to needing a release valve. Everybody needs an outlet to vent. I know there are times when I’m down & out, I don’t want you to relate to me being down & out, I just want you to shut up & listen THEN if you should choose to speak choose your words wisely. I’m a pragmatist, I want constructive support not speeches. (But hey, God bless you for your support)

But I digress, we were talking about unbelief & Jeff’s sermon – faith as it were. I realized today, sitting in church, listening to Jeff Manning speak, that you really don’t know if you have faith or not until it’s tested.