It's not faith to say that when something painful happens, when you lose and lose again and the hurt goes so deep that you don't think you can take another breath, it's all going to work out for good. Faith doesn't explain. It doesn't even need to know or expect a happy ending. That's not what we're promised. Faith is abandoning illusions. It rests in something bigger, something beyond us and our ability. And I suspect you know that now.

Lord, thank You," Elizabeth whispered. "Thank You for Your mercy and Your goodness. Thank You for answering. And help me focus on the things I can see You doing instead of the things I can't see.

She'd wondered what she'd ever do if God would actually speak to her while she was praying. Some of her friends, particularly one over in Point Pleasant, had encouraged her to get slain in the Spirit as if that would change things between her and God. She'd already been slain as much as she needed as far as she was concerned.

Yeah, right, I thought. God hadn't asked me if I wanted to go deeper, and thank you very much, I liked the shallows. It's easier to play when there's no current. In the middle you lose your footing; you lose control. You lose.

Miracles exist - you just have to believe it.

Whether one believes in miracles or the miraculous has mostly to do with the presuppositions one brings to the subject.

Everything God does and everything God calls us to only make sense from the perspective of eternity. If there is no end to the story, believers are a bunch of fools who need to be pitied. There is no reason for what we have tried to do. But there is a final chapter! God has opened it up so that we could look in and then look back to our lives with understanding and hope.

She did not tell them to clean up their lives, or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek, or its glory-bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have is the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.

Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that would take a long, long time.

In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart. She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound and pure. She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.

She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.

faith is acting as if God is telling the truth.