Continue the Race. Continue the story.

As I mentioned several weeks ago, the tiny church I attend in my little swath of the Midwest is working weekly on the fruits of the Spirit. This past Sunday, the fruit that was highlighted was faith.

Faithfulness seems to be something I tend to struggle with at times and yet embrace all in the same. If I were to compare my faith to that of others, I find myself lacking and almost faithless. But I have come to realize that, like life, faith is not a competition. While we are supposed to run the race of faith, it is a race of endurance and there are no winners or losers. It is a story to keep writing. It is a theme of our own lives, should we choose to make it so.

That is just it. Faith, like belief, is a choice. Not everyone chooses to have faith in the same thing. I believe I will wake up each and every morning. Some don’t wish to have that belief. I have faith in the Christian God. Others choose to believe in other faith traditions. Still others choose not to at all. And that’s okay too. I’ve never been comfortable with the whole cramming religion down other’s throats, so I don’t try to push my religion on others. I live my story of my faith and hope that whatever anyone believes in, they too will continue that story.

May they be stories of all being embraced in love instead of hating those who are different.

May they be stories of welcoming the refugee and sheltering those in need, instead of pushing them aside and claiming “we need to take care of just our own” (Click here for a really good blog post about that that was written by a friend of mine.)

May they be stories of paying it forward, even if we have not been given things in the past.

May they be stories of unity instead of division, of coming together to be an association that can help the community.

May they be stories of stretching out, almost blindly into the darkness to reach someone who is hurting in ways we cannot fathom.

May they be stories of extending grace and mercy to those that wronged us, even as we set boundaries to keep it from happening again.

May they be stories of love, of hope, of peace, of joy as we continue to weave the magic of what it means to be faithful into our lives and their own.

To be faithful means to continue to write your story, no matter where it takes you or what it will become. It means to blend the legacies of the clouds of witnesses and saints that went on before and heling to complete their chapters while writing our own. It’s continuing traditions but carving out new paths and new ways to reach those deemed unreachable, untouchable, unloved.

It’s time to continue to run the race. It’s time to write our stories.

Be faithful. Whatever that means to you.

Stay magical.

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