Anything but Blind

St. Augustine once said, "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."

Is faith blind, then? If we believe in something we can't see, how do we know it's there?

Let me start by saying faith is anything but blind. Yes, we must follow a Lord who does not always visibly reveal Himself to us, but that doesn't mean we follow Him blindly. Not in the slightest. We do not follow Him blindly because there is so much more to faith than sight. We know He will not abandon us; He has told us this since the beginning of time. He has proven it to us time and time again. We have no plausible reason to doubt Him, to believe He is not present, caring for and loving us constantly. Even when we don't feel or see Him, we KNOW He loves us. We KNOW He is there. Deep in our hearts, we know we're not following Him blindly--and yet, we allow ourselves to be convinced otherwise.

I struggle with this often. Just because I don't see God at work in my life, I assume He is not there. My favorite band has a song called "Be Concerned," in which they address a similar feeling in regards to their relationship with God.

Where'd You go, huh?

They all think I know You.

It's so hard to motivate me

to devote a single inch of me

to something I can't see.

Why do we struggle with this devotion? Has God not proven His love to us? Did He not prove to us that He would be with us when He gave His life for our sake? 

I approach this situation from the completely wrong direction. God's not "something I can't see." I see Him every day. The problem is that I don't recognize Him. I don't see Him because He's not a burning bush or a figure in a vision.

The absence of God's visible presence does not mean we should give up. It does not mean we should stop believing. Imagine if we approached everything in our life with such wild accusations. Imagine if we claimed that air does not exist because we cannot see it. How irrational. Shouldn't the fact that we are breathing be enough to prove that air is present? Similarly, shouldn't everything around us prove to us that God is there? The breaths we take. The fact that we have woken up alive. The love we give and receive. The miracles of creation we witness each second. The list goes on and on. God is present. He is present in the burning bushes and barely audible whispers. He is everywhere we turn; we just choose to ignore Him.

Faith--true faith--means believing in God when we see Him, and believing in Him even more when we don't. It takes a faithful person to realize that God is still present even when He is imperceptible to the senses.

Only when we stop listening to our doubts will we notice the "reward of faith." Only then will we see the benefits of our faith and realize that God had never left us in the first place.We must believe God when He says, "I will be with you always" (Matthew 28:20). He's not lying. He has not left us. We may not see Him, but how could we possibly claim He is not there?

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29).