How faith grows

by Sarah-Leah Pimentel · February 2, 2014

When life’s knocks threaten to derail us and leave us feeling lost and vulnerable, the people who care about us try to comfort us, speaking words of hope into our confusion.

Mustard seeds, as mentioned in the gospels. (Photo: Scarletina/Morguefile)

You may have heard these words of encouragement from many a well-meaning friend or family member: don’t lose faith, keep the faith, remain faithful. Sound familiar?

And yet, very often, our troubles and the difficulties we face are the very things that put our faith to the test.

Think of how difficult it is to remain faithful in a marriage that has lost the excitement of its first romance. How hard it is to keep faith when we watch a debilitating illness consume the life of our loved ones or even ourselves despite numerous operations and painful treatments.

And how can one not lose faith when it seems that we are floating directionless on an open sea and God is nowhere to point us in the right direction?

As children we were reared on Bible stories and often heard about the great men and women of faith – of Moses who encountered God in a burning bush and was given a direction for his life and an entire nation; of Abraham and Sarah who were told by angels they would bear a son who would become the father of all nations; of Mary and Joseph who had God speak to them in visions and dreams.

Sometimes we hope for or even expect that God will reveal himself to us in some spectacular way, and that will be proof of our faith. And then we are disappointed when it doesn’t happen that way.

More often than not, God speaks gently into the quiet of our hearts. There are no flashes of lightning, no booming voice from the heavens. Faith, Jesus tells us, can be the size of a mustard seed.

I bought some mustard seeds the other day and was surprised by how tiny they were. Yet, our Lord assures us that even a faith so small is powerful enough to move mountains (Mt 17:20).

Does that not describe each one of us so perfectly? We are often very unsure of where our lives are headed and struggle to find meaning in the things that bring us suffering. Faced with so many different possibilities, our faith often wavers when it comes to making good choices.

Rather than being discouraged by this, we can take comfort that even if our faith is as tiny as a mustard seed, God can work miracles in our lives if we place every situation we face before him.

Many of those miracles may appear imperceptible to human eyes, but the inner transformation that takes place in our souls is a manifestation that we are, indeed, a people of faith.

Almost without noticing it, God’s kingdom begins to take root in our hearts. Our faith grows and we become a source of faith for others, as the Gospel tells us: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches (Lk 13:19).

And this is what this monthly column hopes to become: a place to share stories of faith, to feed faith in one another and to encourage those mustard seeds to grow into blossoming trees that provide shelter for others.

Or, as a friend of mine with a love for cooking would say, let the mustard seeds become the spice of life!