Faith is not a magic trick. I remember walking home from elementary school one day and attempting an experiment. I told a tree to uproot itself and move. I had been thinking about the verse in the Gospel according to Luke where Jesus told his disciples that if they only had faith enough, they could command a tree to be uprooted and thrown into the sea (Luke 17:6). I knew that I believed in God, that I had faith, so I thought I should try commanding the tree, even though I wasn’t really sure what that would prove. I tried it and nothing happened.
I hadn’t really expected anything to happen but even then I knew it wasn’t because I lacked faith in God. I truly believed that God could move the tree, I just didn’t think that he would. I’ve also tried walking on water a few times but always to no avail.
Have these failed attempts at performing signs and wonders shattered my faith? No. I believe in God, in Jesus, and I believe in miracles. These youthful experiments were simply the beginnings of me wrestling both with the idea of faith and with how to understand scripture. They led me to questions such as, “If everything in the Bible is true and I know that I have faith, but nothing happens when I tell a tree to move, what does that mean? Do I need more faith?”
And truthfully, I probably do need more faith. But recognizing my need for greater faith wasn’t my main conclusion. Rather my answer was a greater awareness that I didn’t always understand the Bible, that as much as I wanted to believe the Word of God, not everything made sense to me.
This awareness has led me to be grateful to have a teaching authority outside of myself. I like to understand things and God has blessed me with a pretty decent intellect, but I am thankful that I do have to rely on my intellect alone for understanding all that God has revealed. The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, gives us our authoritative meaning of scripture. Even so, some passages remain mysterious, meant to be pondered and grabbled with because it is in the process of doing so that we draw nearer to God, learn to attend to the sound of his voice.
I’ve strayed a bit from my original point, which was my other conclusion from these youthful experiments- faith is not magic. The name of Jesus is not a spell that allows us to manipulate the world around us, to shape it to our will. This is not what Jesus meant when he said that if we prayed in his name, we would surely receive all we asked for (John 14: 13-14). I have pondered over this particular verse for years, baffled by the seeming straightforwardness of it. There does not seem to be much room for misinterpretation, and yet I am confident that the formula “Heavenly Father, in Jesus’ name, I ask for a million dollars,” will not summon the requested wealth. Why not? Can we not trust Jesus? Does he not give us real authority in him?
Yes, we can trust Jesus and all that he reveals and yes, we do have authority in him. But it is the in him part that matters. Praying for something in Jesus’ name means praying in union with him; it means uniting our will to his, not bending his will to ours. Prayer is much less about me getting what I want than it is about allowing the Lord to teach me what I need.
My will must be conformed to his, and when this happens I will find that I receive what I pray for, for I will be praying for those things that God, in his perfect wisdom and love, desires to give me, those things that will make me more and more the woman he has called and created me to be. My prayer will become more like Jesus’ own prayer, “Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done.”
This is all easy for me to say as I sit in a quiet adoration chapel, peacefully gazing upon my loving God, so mysteriously and wondrously present. It is harder to accept the fact that asking for something, “in Jesus’ name,” does not guarantee that I will get what I want when I want something really badly.
There are times when faith being a bit more magical would be really nice. There are even times when the countless miracles that have happened throughout history and continue to happen all around us seem like an affront, mocking the lack of a miracle, fervently prayed for, begged for in faith and our best attempt at surrender.
A faithful couple receives a heart-wrenching diagnosis regarding their infant child. They tearfully offer the child to God, prayerfully trusting him to heal their little one and the baby still dies. Did they not pray hard enough, not have enough faith? To say to them, “God’s will be done,” would be offensive if not blasphemous. God does not will the death of the innocent. And yet here we are. So, now what?
At times there is no easy answer, no right words, no perfect interpretation that will save us from our grief. There is only Jesus and clinging to him and choosing to believe that in doing so we will find peace and the strength to continue. And it is here that our faith increases, our faith not in what Jesus can do but in who he is. Here we begin to pray honestly, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief,” or we stop relying on words all together and allow the Holy Spirit to cry out for us from the depths of our soul as we simply cling to Jesus, allowing him to bring us through the darkness of anguish and grief into the light of renewed and deepened trust and hope. This is a prayer that takes time, one that is not uttered once but rather breathed daily, moment from moment. It is the prayer of our heart poured out to Jesus as we recognize over and over our need for him, a prayer more powerful than any magic trick.
Prose for the sake of Poetry 