by Faith

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." - Hebrews 11:1

This coming week is a very busy one for me at work, and I really feel uneasy. I usually can handle stressful situations ok, but somehow this time I feel very vulnerable. The nature of the work I am doing now is fairly new to me, and definitely I feel quite inadequate. I think it is probably not a big deal in the big picture of things, but my weak self is stumbling at it.

I have the intellectual understanding that having faith in God will give us hope and reassurance, but to actually live it out is harder than it sounds. But in this weakness, I know that God's grace will be better demonstrated, so I just have to step it up by faith.

In grad cell, a couple of weeks ago we did a bible study on Hebrews 11, and it starts with a brief definition of faith, and then it includes many small stores of great characters like Abraham, Enoch, Noah, Abel, etc. I learn in Sunday school that Jewish people likes to define things with stories (as opposed to facts), so this is an example of how faith is explained with stories. If you look carefully at each story, you get to learn more about what faith really is.

As always, I randomly mentioned some illustrations on how to explain faith in other disciplines.

Engineering:
Engineers are really lazy so we like to explain things with formula, and just plug in the number and get the results. To be even more lazier, we can re-use an existing formula that starts with "F" (for faith), like the second Newton law:

F = ma (Force equals to mass times acceleration)
Fc = mac (small modification to centripetal force equals to mass times centripetal acceleration)

This can also translates into "Faith in Christ is equal to much assurance in Christ".

Science:
There is a condition called myopia (or nearsightedness) where the individual cannot see well things from afar because the light rays converges too early like in the first picture:

In the second picture a double concave lens is used to correct the rays so that the rays converges at the right point.

When we do not see things, we are uncertain and feel stressed. But faith is like the corrective lens that allows us to see that God is control and we reassured.

 Accounting:
So accountants have to balance long list of assets and liabilities. It is an arduous jobs, and many work overtime.

Most of the times, we don't know how it works or how they do it. But we know they will get it done. So faith is like this kind of trust.