true biblical faith leaves you very vulnerable to reality, because now there is no place to hide. No wonder we prefer abstractions over the actual! We can hide behind abstractions, but Incarnation leaves you both utterly exposed and constantly invited.   incorporation

Faith is the opposite of resentment, cynicism, and negativity. Faith is always, finally, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faith actually begins to create what it desires. Faith always recreates the good world.

Trusting in God is not a passive dependency, a handing over of responsibility: "Okay, God, you can do it." Faith in God is primarily an active virtue. Faith does not necessarily mean an expectation that God will intervene. Faith is an end in itself. Faith is an active empowering of the other to be everything he or she can be for you.

Jesus is not telling us to believe unbelievable things, as if that would somehow please God. He is much more saying to us, "Try this," and you will see for yourself that it is true. But that initial trying is always a leap of faith into some kind of action or practice.

There is Someone dancing with you and you no longer need to prove to anyone that you are right, nor are you afraid of making mistakes. Another word for that is faith.

With this access point, God becomes more a verb than a noun, more a process than a conclusion, more an experience than a dogma, more a personal relationship than an idea. There is Someone dancing with you and you no longer need to prove to anyone that you are right, nor are you afraid of making mistakes. Another word for that is faith.

Anything is a sacrament if it serves as a shortcut to the Infinite, but it will always be hidden in something that is very finite.

You do not have to see the sun to know that it is still shining.

Great spiritual teachers learn to balance knowing with not knowing, as illustrated in this oft-quoted aphorism: It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. The true biblical notion of faith, which balances knowing with not knowing, is rather rare today, especially among many religious folks who think faith is being certain all the time--when the truth is the exact opposite. But we have little theology of darkness today.

Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it.

Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it. This is perhaps our major stumbling stone

He does not know the outcome ahead of time, or his confidence would be in himself and God to pull it off, which would then largely be a matter of the willpower of belief. Faith is so much more than strong willpower