Faith In Your Insignificance

No matter what we lose or gain, who we were, are or will become, what we did or didn’t do, and so on…

As big as your life seems to you, do you see that amidst grand sweeps of steel and time, you only cast a small shadow? As important as you are, can you also face your own insignificance?

I know I know. It’s the opposite of what most of us hear: “You’re special; you’re important; you make a difference; you’re going to change things.”

And I believe those things will happen for each one of us.

What I’m getting at is that we are fragile, temporary beings, made of sinew and bone, just waiting to become dust. But what makes us last, even when we are gone, is our commonality to one another.

Even through our differences we are brought together. Truly though, we are all the same, not just biologically, but also through our family and friends, our relationships. Even in our fears, hopes, dreams, cruelty and goodness—we are the same. And within this exists both our uniqueness and insignificance.

So what do we keep trying to figure out? What do we keep planning for? What are we expecting life to tell us?

(I ask myself all these questions too. I’m not writing this because I have it all figured out, but because I’m still wondering if any of these questions have answers.)

God has a plan, yes. But He’s the only one that knows it.

Have you figured that out yet? And even if you don’t believe in God, have you figured out the power of destiny and the cosmos over your own attempts to plan your life?

So if life is not in our hands, what does this mean? Do we not have influence in what happens to us tomorrow?

Well yes, we do have influence. And this influence stems from faith.

What? But isn’t faith based on belief rather than proof?

Yes it is. And for this, faith is liberating. Do you see that? It is, in a way to surrender you days, to let go, and to put your life in His hands.

If you have faith, you can:

• Be uprooted—released from fear and immobility—and allow yourself to move from the familiar to the unexplored, and let yourself grow throughout this entire world.
• Leave tomorrow unplanned, and be as wild as a March wind.
• Expand beyond your wonders, and be brave enough to wander also.
• Leave beauty undefined, and capable in every day.
• Give a little more than you thought, and forget about being secreted away.
• Reuse what most think is broken—have faith in the scraps and our need not to waste.
• Believe in the birdsongs and our connection with nature.
• Wake at the rising hour, your hour.
• Endure sorrow and solitude.
• Live in the good moments and know there are still more to come.
• Stop dreaming about the other side and see the beauty that’s already been here all along.

Through faith we can do all this and more. In faith we know God. In faith is strength and freedom. With faith we can be uprooted and unsure…we can be our self…we can be each other…because we are common, we are all the same…I am because we all are…that is humanity.

Do you feel me?