Have you ever wondered why you have faith in God and others don’t? Maybe you had parents who passed their faith on to you, but like me, you could have been brought up in a family which had no religion at all. Maybe you are a convert, but you could have lived in a country in which people don’t even hear the mention of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And why you have kept the faith while others who had it have abandoned it?
Only God knows why he favoured the Hebrews. They received the gift of faith through God’s direct revelation to them, and they experienced his salvation in the events of the Exodus. And yet time and time again “they forgot the God who saved them.” Incredibly they abandoned the one, true God and they ended up worshipping the image of a calf made from gold. So why should we be more faithful than they were?
When Our Lord came among us, his credentials were overwhelming: his good works done in the Father’s name, his miracles, and the very testimony of scripture itself. And yet the Jewish leaders failed to respond to Jesus. Jews today still fail to respond to him. Why is it that we accept Jesus and others don’t?
We have all met people who are obviously very good people. We feel that they are much worthier than we to enjoy the gift of faith, and yet it is we who have faith and not them.
The gift of faith is a deep mystery, one which theologians have struggled to understand for centuries, and without much agreement. But one thing is for certain: we should be grateful for our faith, not with a smug complacency that we are better than others, but with a sincere humility which recognises that faith is God’s gift of which we are totally unworthy.
Dum Tacet Clamat 