Faith as a challenge

I read a thought-provoking article today that I found linked from the Rabbit Room... I encourage you to read it in its entirety (click here) but thought I would include a few passages here for you to chew on.  It certainly spoke to me and the journey we have been on with Noah.

"At any rate, genuine faith is no such comfort, at least not in the way of an easy kind of comfort. On the contrary, it is quite demanding. Esteemed author Madeleine L’ Engle expressed it well in a recent issue of Newsweek:

NEWSWEEK: So to you, faith is not a comfort?

MADELEINE L'ENGLE: Good heavens, no. It's a challenge: I dare you to believe in God.

NEWSWEEK: Many people see faith as anti-intellectual.

MADELEINE L'ENGLE: Then they're not very bright. It takes a lot of intellect to have faith, which is why so many people only have religiosity.

(May 17, 2004 Newsweek)

Faith, in other words, is an unflinching engagement with the world around us. It doesn’t allow us to retreat to the comfort and ease of unbelief. Instead we are called to live in the tension between what we see with our eyes and what we are called to see by faith.

Author Frederick Buechner challenged believers to read the morning paper with its list of tragedies and injustices before making proclamations of God’s goodness and sovereignty; meaning that the only faith that is worth much of anything is the kind that knowingly sees the worst of the world and still says: "blessed be the name of the Lord." This kind of faith is not for the faint of heart."