The Gifts of Imperfection - Guidepost 5- Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith - Letting Go of the Need for Certainty

A few months ago I wrote about my love of walking and praying labyrinths.

It has not always been that way, though. I remember someone at a conference talking about it, hearing of how it led to the mystery of God, and I got very nervous about what I was hearing. "what kind of New Age stuff is this?"

For me, praying a labyrinth felt too "squishy" (Rob Bell's word). It wasn't solid enough for me. That has, of course, changed. It has cleansed as I have grown more and more comfortable with the mystery of God.. I preached on this journey to mystery this past Sunday.

What really captured me in this chapter was Brown's definition of faith. She defines faith as "a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty." Her words sound a lot like Hebrews 11:1 which says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ' '

All of this led me to a quote by Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware who wrote,

"We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our faith as the cause of our wonder."