A Student's View Of Faith

#409

I don't think of myself as a numerologist or one that places significance on superstitious numbers. For example, you could find me living perfectly happy on the thirteenth floor of a building, excepting that some people might be hesitant to come visit me. I usually find Friday the Thirteenth to be a splendid day; kind of a reverse expectation of the day that so many dread. Yet, recently I noticed an obscure numerical co-incidence that merits notation here, if for no other reason than it gives me a good excuse to write about something I find quite important.

For several weeks I have been visiting an eighty-five year old saint, Elva Rice, in a nearby nursing home where she happens to live in Room 409. Several nights ago as I came out of the nursing home, entranced with the mysteries of the Hale-Bopp comet setting in the west, it occurred to my idle mind that there is a super-duper household disinfectant cleaner called simply "409." I don't know what brought this less-than-profound decidedly non-cosmic co-incidence of the universe to mind but it inspired me to get my brain out of idle and into a meditative state.

What emerged was an opportunity to consider a significant spiritual principle: we become like those we associate with, for good or bad. It has been an unfortunate reality that I have had a struggle with faith for many years while others simply know who they are in a spiritual sense and have a total certainty regarding the reality of God and Heaven. Most of the people around me have also struggled with doubt a lot and it is a rare person in my world that KNOWS for certain about God and Heaven or even wants to acknowledge the possibility of their reality. Birds of a feather flock together as they say.

In the past three weeks that I have been going to the nursing home I have made an important personal discovery. Faith is infectious! Ms. Rice has as strong and consistent and inspiring a Christian faith as I have yet encountered in my extended travels and she has infected me with it. I have found that my own tortured struggle with faith has been greatly diminished during the past weeks. I have even begun to experience a quiet wondrous knowing that is new to me in all the decades of doubting I have wrestled with. I find myself captivated with the idea that the Christian message is REALLY true and not subject to my doubts. Talk about a cure for fears and anxieties!

Last night I went back to that nursing home feeling like a student taking the most important course of study in the world: reality. In nursing homes there's no pretense. There's congestive heart failure, night terrors, constant screaming, vast isolation, loneliness, fear, dementia, PAIN. Big pain. But what I have learned there is that the Christian faith is for real and is bigger than any of these things.

Late in the evening my personal saint asked me to wheel her around those halls so that she could have prayer with her fellow patients. We went to several rooms and each time I was introduced as her adopted son. I stood behind her wheelchair and waited for her to pray. After some awkward silence she asked me to pray out loud. I did. You know what? I believed those prayers for those dear suffering women were heard in the highest parts of Heaven. I knew that I knew. I knew there was no more important thing in the world I could be doing than praying, laying my hands on those platinum heads. In that instant, I knew that I have been infected with the magic of faith. And, its safe from the strongest disinfecting cleanser, even 409.

In the Old Testament book of Isaiah we are told that the way to cool down a fire is to spread out the coals. Separate them and they will grow cold and dark. In the New Testament book of Hebrews we are told to not forsake the fellowship of the saints. We are like coals. If a number of coals are kept in proximity to each other, they will maintain their heat and light. In a few short weeks I have found that getting next to a red hot coal of faith has yielded much heat and light in my dark world of doubt. Last night, I found that I could take my own meager heat and light into those dark warrens of fear and bring possibility to those shattered and frightened souls.

Your own answer may be found in the back halls of a nursing home. It might even be found in a nearby church. And watch out, you might get infected for life and there's no disinfectant for a Faith infection except Heaven.