FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS FANTASY

Faith without works is fantasy. In other words, we must prove our "realization," our "blinding flash of the obvious," our "truth."

Without our own walking around proof, they are just so many words. Pretty words. Sound good. But what are they good for? Just like war...absolutely nothing. Well, not really...not absolutely nothing. For we must start somewhere, and a thought leading to words is our beginning.

The fantasy is when we get stuck there...enchanted by our own thoughts and words but unable, unwilling really, to walk them.

Say we read the line from the Bible. "He goes before us to make the crooked placed straight," and we really like that. Then we are gifted with a blinding flash of the obvious, knowing it for truth. THEN, here we are facing a crooked place.

We get to decide whether to go forward, trusting that the crooked place will be made straight, or...to ponder it. Ponder, of course, means we start trying to figure out how to fix the crooked place...how to make it straight by not walking to and through it, fixing it on this side of the crooked place. Understanding it, you see...at which we can never completely succeed. And we've now got a crooked place made into a personal problem with a resentment aborning.

It takes courage (also known as faith) to risk believing unto doing. We have a boatload of courage within us...we have the same amount of courage as the mother giving birth, as the soldier under fire. We're just not yet consciously at the place where we have no choice but to use that courage.

We can dodge our chance to prove our truth, to show forth our courage, our faith. We can deny, we can justify...but that chance will only come around again, and it will come as a much, much harder choice. For that is the law, according to me.

Once we take that first choice of trusting and walking forward, we prove our truth. Interestingly, no longer do we need to tell others...in fact, they tell us! We find ourselves drawing others to us without effort or thought. We feel lighter, we know gratitude as we breathe...we are grateful not for specifics, but for fact.

And, oh look!...another crooked place is heading our way...if we're doing it right.

Thank you.