No matter what you believe, faith is there

The Rev. Valerie Miller-Coleman, executive director of Family Promise of Lawrence, www.lawrencefamilypromise.org:

My faith is uniquely mine. All my experiences in community and alone in the woods shape my sense of the divine and my hope for things as yet unseen. The books I’ve read, my family’s story and the stories that witness to the faith of generations before me help me imagine what I haven’t yet experienced — and what I may never experience of God. Between experience and imagination I build a sense of God and a hope for the future distinctly my own. A life without my faith is difficult to imagine but no more so than imagining a life without my family or without one of my senses or without my education. I know that for as many people as live there are so many faiths.

During one wonderful year I lived with families all over the world. A Muslim family on the island of Zanzibar gave me their best room for a month during the season of Ramadan. We ate together and shared our stories. They taught me to speak a little Kiswahili, to wear a head scarf and to speak politely to elders using the language of Islam. At other times during that year I lived for several weeks with two Hindu families, one urban and one rural, and with Indio-Catholic families deep in the mountains of Guatemala. Again, each of these families extended gracious hospitality to me and invited me into their lives of faith.

I can imagine, just barely, what it would have been like to grow up in each of these families and to share their faiths. It might be beautiful and painful and full of questions — in other words not unlike my faith — but unquestionably unique.

— Send e-mail to Valerie Miller-Coleman at valerie@lawrencefamilypromise.org.

Shudder to think of closing out God

The Rev. Robert Leiste, pastor, Redeemer Lutheran Church, 2700 Lawrence Ave.:

Having never not lived in the faith, no. When I thought about this question, in a way I had to shudder. Not having a life of faith means that I join the other open-minded thinkers who close-mindedly say there is no God. By joining this group, it means I only live by what I can see or depend on the latest ideas of knowledge, knowing they will change. Where is my certainty for the meaning of life? Plus, joining this group precludes from my life any idea of God, angels or afterlife while depending on science that tells me much is true even though it has never really seen it, like life on other planets? Got proof?

Hebrews 11:1 says that “faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” My life in the faith is not just a blind leap into darkness but is built on the actions of God recorded for us in the Scriptures. As we learn of God from Scriptures and how he acted in human history, we see his love, help, comfort and hope given to his people in this world. These actions climax in the work of his son who sacrificed himself on the cross that we could have forgiveness, life and hope by his love/grace through faith. This faith shows us a God who cares for his church and takes steps to save it from an evil world.

I had a member once who was facing a surgery that she would not live through nor could she live without. When asked she replied, “I’m not worried, I believe in Jesus, he will take care of me. But what do those people who don’t have faith do?”

— Send e-mail to Robert Leiste at raleiste@yahoo.com.