In many ways I feel as if I'm working backward. I am going somewhere, almost backing up to the fork in the road that I missed along the way and got off course. This backtracking has been a difficult experience, having to retrace steps that lead to where I currently am personally, reluctantly having to search for the proper direction. It may not be backtracking at all, perhaps it just feels that way.

This kind of effort means admitting to myself that I have gone astray from who I'm meant to be, who I can and should be. I'm becoming painfully aware that bitterness, arrogance, judging others have all crept into my being and have become comfortable partners. Having to question everything I do, or say, or think. It's one thing to intellectually believe in the Creator but it's quite another to have a deep faith. How are faith and belief different? Can one have one without the other? In Webster's they are very similar, if not quite the same.

I would wonder that one can believe without having faith, but I'm not so sure one can have faith without belief. It seems there's something deeper to faith as I understand it. Something that's personal, trusting. Trusting. Maybe that's the big difference for me. I can believe my car will get me to the grocery store but I may not have faith that it will, I don't trust it.

Guarantee comes to mind also. I can't guarantee anything. Just this past week as a team our house staff guaranteed the kids at work we were moving into a different house. When moving day arrived we were told we could not move yet. We should not have made that guarantee. And it turns out we could not follow through on it and many of the boys were terribly upset. I can understand that. There's a level of trust that comes into play and for our boys this is a breach of that trust. Guaranteeing one thing and then not being able to follow through.

If I apply this world experience to God then I limit God and make it possible for God to fail, to break trust, to not fulfill the only guarantee that I can think we have been given. The Guarantee that Christ fulfills. Yet it seems so often beyond me to accept this beyond what I know and experience in this fallen, yet often beautiful, place. God should not be limited, God can be only understood in as much as we're allowed to understand, in as much as we are truly able to understand. Some of us understand differently than others. When those understandings are not in contrast with God but not my understanding then I have to be careful how I judge others. How easy it can be to separate the Family.

I live by Grace, Forgiveness. The love of a Creator who forgives every time I err, and it is often. Grant me humility, Grace, Mercy.