The online modules and digital dashboards promising cure-alls in project planning are about a dime a dozen these days.
There are entire degree programs and certifications in strategy.
And yet I am lost in this world for how to strategically abide in faith, trust, and Truth.
What do we do when plans and providence seem to be in conflict?
Where in the course catalogue do we find the subject of surrender?
“True faith,” Thomas Merton said, “is never merely a source of spiritual comfort. It may indeed bring peace, but before it does so it must involve us in struggle.”
Ah yes. Here we go. The struggle of letting go. And not just letting go of our human leaning toward control, but also letting go of the blind belief that the answers or solutions we seek exist anywhere outside of God.
Living by faith means learning to doubt the man-made conventions of authority that want to sell us the idea they have everything figured out.
When Jesus called His students and then sent them, two by two, into communities to teach, serve, and spread the Gospel message, they went literally with the clothes on their backs. Perhaps Jesus was teaching His students to trust that everything they needed would be provided, as they followed the Way He sent them, and perhaps Jesus also wanted to show new believers that sharing His story does not involve a tip jar.
Regardless, the mysteries of our faith make room for heavenly solutions.
And if faith is all I have, what more do I need?
It is the daily walk, a living hope, that leads to the promise of perfect love. Faith, when proven and refined, is precious and valuable as praise in the heavenly realms.
The weirdness of the world is that it eventually usurps everything it gives, whereas faith is redeemable for the inheritance already bestowed, the good and perfect gift — unchanging and unfading — reserved in paradise.
This gift, the goal of our faith, is available to us here and now in that beautiful space just beyond what our eyes can see.
What does it look like to you?1
- If you say a project planning dashboard, I will cry. ↩︎
