Faith (04-27-09)

Bad news from Topeka this week. According to the most recent estimates, our beloved state will record negative economic growth for the first time since World War II. The current estimates predict additional budget shortfalls, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This news caused the legislature to revisit educational funding with the purpose of discussing further cuts to K12 schools.

Hard times, to be sure. The law makers will have to make some tough choices. This, in turn, will force our superintendent and our school board to make some tough choices. Unless something unforeseen takes place, things will get a whole lot worse, and the hard times we are already experiencing are sure to get a lot harder.

Now is the time to have faith. I have been thinking a lot about faith recently. Two weeks ago, I was asked to give the children’s message at church, and I talked to the kids about the gospel for that week, the passage about doubting Thomas. I had the kids close their eyes and asked them to explain how it was that everything they could see would still be there even when their eyes were closed. I challenged them to justify how they could know something exists even when they couldn’t see, hear, feel, or in some way prove it to exist.

The answer is faith. And now, in the midst of ever darker predictions and ever more severe cuts, I realize that more than ever, we need to have faith.

How do we get faith? I believe that everything happens for a reason. While I don’t claim to know the reason for our current economic woes, I see this time as an opportunity – an opportunity to have faith.

I believe that no matter what happens, no matter what tragedies befall us, there is something to be learned in that experience. I believe that our struggles will help bring us closer together. That which does not kill us will make us stronger, and that which does kill us can help make others stronger.

Yesterday, I witnessed this first hand at the celebration of the life of Dale Jones. Inside a packed church, I witnessed a group of people coming together with an amazing faith in life everlasting. We took comfort in our faith that Dale is now in a better place, that he had gone home to be with the Lord. It was no funeral, but rather a true celebration of a remarkable life and a remarkable passage from mortality to immortality.


This is not to say that we weren’t hurting, and more than a few tears were shed and will continue to be shed as we miss Dale terribly. Yet, though the tears, our faith that we will one day be reunited with Dale keeps us going. Our faith helps us rise above the grief, enables us to transcend the pain in order to see the greater power at work.

The same faith is needed now. As our state makes hard cuts, as our local school board makes difficult choices, we must have faith that this dark period in our history will eventually lead to a better place, a higher glory, a richer future for our town and its people.

I don’t know how. I have no proof. It would be easy to surrender to despair and to wallow in the negative emotions of anger, self-pity, and disgust. Personally, though, I chose not to take that road. I would rather have faith that our community will someday rise and be stronger because of these trials we now must endure.

There is a purpose to all this. There is a higher power at work. If nothing else, these hard times serve to test our resolve. It is a test I believe that our community will be able to pass, with the help of a little faith.