To want to have faith

There was just the two of us warming our hands over a serious mug of tea. Big black tea with just a smidge of sugar and scalding hot. We had put the world to rights; We had sorted out the church of God and found a cure for COVID. We had erased world poverty, ensured peace in the Middle East  and found a recipe for non fattening triple choc biscuits.

Then the conversation really started. We talked candidly and honestly about our faith or the lack of it. Our struggles, our doubts, our arid times and those rare fleeting moments when it all seemed so close and real. They disappeared so  quickly that we were left wondering if we had imagined the whole thing.‘If only we had more faith’ we muttered in unison.

Fortunately a phrase came to mind at just the right moment. Don’t worry, this will never happen again so there is no need to panic or get excited.

‘To want to have Faith, is faith itself’ Read it again slowly to yourself. ‘To want to have faith … is faith itself.’ It does make sense when you say it slowly and mull it over with a friend, a beverage and a non fattening triple choc biscuit.

That yearning, that wanting to have faith, that knowing that you fall short, that realisation that there is something more and craving it… that is faith in and of itself. It’s OK not to have reached and experienced your spiritual nirvana. Just to want to get there, just to walk stoically on with depleted courage and waning desire and yet still walk. That’s just as big a dollop of faith as actually having arrived.

To want to have faith… that’s all you’ve got to do. Just to want faith is enough.