It feels often times that we fall into following religion without stepping out in faith. Religion can make you feel secure, it can grant comfort in times of tribulation, and solace in mourning. Religion can tell you what to believe and how to feel, when we decide to be casual observers of religion and not people of faith we fall flat. Religion without faith can feel like a prison. When we chose to believe only in the safety of rules and doctrines to lay out how to live and what choices to make based on the simple security of religion that binds us to a hive mentality and keeps us from making tough decisions, we lose something important.
When we don’t believe in more than our religion, we are just going through the motions searching for security in something that was never created to make us feel safe. When we chose to operate based on the notion of faith as opposed to the rules of religion, we chose to live outside what can be known and step into the void of the unexpected. To chose to live by faith is to abandon our desire to control everything and our own plans, and live instead in the hope that our God is establishing our steps before us.
Though my soul has felt in chaos of late- in the preparation, in the excitement, and in the anxiety- I find myself drawn back to the beauty of my surroundings, to the intricacies of this world, woven together so precisely. From the way the sun sets over the mountains, to the way the steam curls off of a cup of fresh brewed coffee on increasingly crisp mornings, to the subtle color shifting in the leaves, this life is a tapestry of living color. I don’t know what lays before my feet as they prepare to travel this glorious world of ours, but I have faith in the feet that have walked this path before me and conquered.
My plans are not my own, I am choosing to live in the unknown world of faith than the safe world of casual religion. The changing of plans is as constant for us as the waves that crest and fall and crash into the shores day after day. The changing of plans can occur in small ways everyday like the small waves that hit our ankles when we walk along the shore, or our plans can change so drastically that they crash over us in an instant wiping away what we thought we knew like a tsunami. The only constant is change and these plans of mine are fleeting and they may change yet, but I do know who’s plans I do trust and they certainly aren’t my own. I chose the unpredictable- I choose something wild.
