Holding Onto the Rope of Faith
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever found yourself speaking words to someone and you have no idea where they came from? That was me the other morning.
My daughter was really stressed out about catching up on schoolwork after a stomach bug. The proverbial mountain felt insurmountable as she looked at all the coursework before her.
Usually, my metaphor for things like this is the staircase—you can’t look at a staircase and suddenly be at the top. You have to take one step, then another and another, to get to your goal. It’s the same thing with what seems like an overwhelming amount of work. If you do one thing, and then the next, then suddenly it’s done, even if it takes a while. The seemingly impossible has become possible.
But before those words could even leave my lips, something else fell out of them—something I’m certain came from the Holy Spirit.
“Stress has a lot to do with faith,” I told her.
I explained that being a Christian involves having faith in something we can’t see, trusting that it is real, all because of an intangible, sometimes indescribable feeling and soul-deep truth we just know in our core. We have to trust in the promises. Trust and believe that salvation is available to us. Trust that Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a home for us in our Father’s house. And if we believe and repent and follow him, we can share in that home.
It can be the same thing with stress over a massive workload or seemingly uncontrollable or insurmountable task. We just have to trust that if we do one thing at a time, it will eventually get done. We have to trust that if we get up every day and put one foot in front of the other, if we show up at our job and push through despite the obstacles facing us, some good will come of this. We’ll serve God’s purpose, get the task done, get to the bottom of the endless pile.
Feelings, doubts, and stress are all things the evil one uses to try to pull us down, hold us back, and keep us from the peace and purpose God intends.
It can be so tempting to let that feeling of overwhelm paralyze us.
But the truth is that perseverance and faith are intimately tied together, woven like a cord. The courage to press on can be hard. But that rope is strong.
And we can trust that by taking the first step, the next will be easier because the doubts begin to fall away. The rope holds tight, and we can climb knowing we are assisted by the One who made the stars.
