Learning to walk by faith, not by sight, helps us view the events of our lives from an eternal, rather than a time-limited or temporal, perspective. As mere mortals, we will all eventually taste both life's joys and its profound sorrows. As such, we make our way through life one step at a time, often wandering into the unknown. Walking by faith lights our path and assures that we do not instead walk in darkness.
Walking only by sight
Walking by sight, or relying only on what we can see with the naked eye, allows us to gain knowledge of the physical world, but it brings us up short when it comes to the help and strength we can get only through tapping into the spiritual. Having once walked only by sight myself, relying simply on what I could see with my eyes and hear with my ears, produced in me a sense of entitlement, not enlightenment. It did not engender in me the faith and resilience I needed to put my life's events into an eternal perspective.
Walking by faith requires patience
Sometimes we get impatient with faith. We pray, we wait; we pray, we wait. We think nothing happens. We wonder why. Perhaps we've forgotten that while faith looks like a noun on paper, walking by faith requires that we take action. Maybe we forgot to do our part; we forgot to walk forward in faith and wait for further direction. More often than not, our answers to life's questions come here a little and there a little, rather than in a burst of light.
Walking to the edge of our faith
Sometimes it may seem as if life's events have run us into a brick wall. We stop, wondering how to proceed from here. How do we get over, under, around, or through this particular brick wall? We rap hard on the wall. Our knuckles get bruised. This is not going to be easy. But if we let them, the brick walls may help us learn, stretch and grow. We find ways to move forward, despite how much we may feel like we'd like to just sit down and quit. Quitting will do us no good. It won't propel us forward, and it won't help us feel better at the end of the day. So we muster up enough grit daily to walk by faith.
Learning to rely on God
At the edge of our faith is where we learn to really rely on God. When we're in the thick of thin times, it may be difficult to see how life will look when we finally come out the other side of whatever particular challenge is plaguing us at the moment. This is a crucial point in learning to walk by faith. It is the place where we either break apart or where our faith engenders in us a sense of resilience. It is where we learn to let go and let God. It is where we learn to walk by faith one step at a time.
Teaching our children to walk by faith
Walking by faith, rather than by sight, allows us to teach our children to walk in the light with us. When we pray, we help them tap into their spiritual, rather than their physical, natures. This is when God opens the eyes of our understanding and infuses us with his divine light and knowledge. Our children learn from our examples. As our children see us walking by faith, they learn do the same, and the faith and strength of our entire family grows.
Remembering that faith and family are eternal
Those things in our lives that are time limited, such as money and fame, or even trials and tragedies, eventually pass from our view as shadows. The things of God that we cannot see or touch, such as family and faith, are eternal. Walking by faith helps both us and our children become enlightened beings. Paying attention to the things that matter most leads us to God.
