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Faith

A strange realisation

jesus and disciplesIn life we generally tend to be conditioned to what we regard as present reality. We expect tomorrow to be pretty much like today. We expect people to behave pretty much the same as they have always behaved. It is only rarely that we have the awakening experience of seeing some part of our world in a new light. Perhaps we start to recognise that we are actually good at some skill such as public speaking which we have previously feared; perhaps we start to notice something admirable about another person that we previously despised.

Luke chapter 24 describes what happened just a few days after Jesus had died and been buried. Their present reality involved adjusting to life without Jesus: hopes disappointed, promises seemingly betrayed, the story seemingly concluded. Then a strange realisation gradually broke over Jesus’s followers, starting with some women at the tomb, followed by two disciples in Emmaus, followed by the eleven: Jesus had come back to life.

Faith normally comes in the form of a strange realisation. At first you have questions and objections, and the story of a God who loves people seems a bit too improbable to be true. But then you experience a sort of awakening. Your questions and objections do not simply vanish into the mist, but a conviction grows within you that God is real, and that there is an order and a reason to everything in the universe.