For many of us Christians-pastors included-our faith is rather flimsy.  It's made out of balsa wood.  It floats and it flies and it's got structure and shape but if it's tested beyond its comfort level it cracks.  No matter that beset by stormy seas it continues to float, no matter that beset by windy days it manages to stay aloft, no matter that it has a past history of surviving stresses and strains; we are still afraid to test it for fear it will fail us.  As if all the previous voyages and flights amount to naught.  Why is that?  Do we harbor a suspicion that God is actually too much like us-that, when push comes to shove and things get desperate enough, God will bail on us?  Maybe that's the crux of the problem: we think God is just like us as opposed to being persistent, consistent, predictable and dependable.  Instead, we may think that God is just like the perfect spouse caught having an extra-marital affair, the kind and supportive boss who fires us for no apparent reason, the parent who leaves behind a stunned family for a "new life."

But God is the antithesis of all that.  Jesus dying on the cross for us is the supreme and ultimate proof of God's "going nowhere" concerning us and our lives.  So, every time you begin to worry that the storms and winds of life will overtake and destroy you, merely rolodex your memory to all those times when God brought you-inconceivably and surprisingly-through it before.  Realize that God hasn't gone anywhere but is as close as the next fervent prayer.  At such times your balsa wood faith will be enough.

 

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.  The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’  But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’  So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’  The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.  I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.  He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’

 

O come, let us sing to the Lord;
   let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
   let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
   and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
   the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
   and the dry land, which his hands have formed.

O come, let us worship and bow down,
   let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
   and we are the people of his pasture,
   and the sheep of his hand.

O that today you would listen to his voice! 
   Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
   as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me,
   and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
   and said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray,
   and they do not regard my ways.’
Therefore in my anger I swore,
   ‘They shall not enter my rest.’