On Monday, Laura and I read from Romans, where Paul talks about Abraham and faith. Or belief, as the Old Testament would call it. The strange this is the emphasis Paul puts on the order of events in Abraham’s life. Was he circumcised and thus made a child of God, or was he made a child of God and then circumcised?

Obviously he believed and then the evidence followed. Faith, and then works. But first of all, faith. It’s amazing, really, how this idea of faith is so radically important to the congruity of the scriptures, and to the congruity of our day-to-day experiences. I get the sense that the scriptures speak of faith the way you and I might talk about electricity: without it, we’re essentially dead hunks of metal and plastic. With it, we’re alive, moving, aware of the world as it really is.

And, like electricity, there’s a source. Faith comes from God. Faith goes to God. It’s a feedback loop that should never end, if only to show his glory.