Believe. Faith is a great hold-all, a great jar in which you can receive a great gift. Get a jar ready for yourself, because you have to approach a great spring. What does it mean, get it ready? Let your faith grow, let it be enlarged, let it become strong, don’t let your faith be slimy and muddy; let your faith be fired, not shattered, by the tribulations of this world. (St. Augustine, sermon 339)

In this short paragraph St. Augustine wrote of things with which we all struggle, even as our faith grows, we struggle with what seems a growing gap between today’s world and the world of the Scripture, of Moses, Elijah, Jesus, and Paul. Augustine lived through the first great sack of Rome ( 410 AD), when Christians questioned their faith and the will of God in the face of apparent chaos and catastrophic destruction. Augustine was a bishop at the time, living and ministering at Hippo, in northern Africa. Many Christians from Rome escaped to Africa and many asked Augustine , “Where was our God in the midst of such devastation and catastrophic loss?” Augustine sometimes preached to address these questions from his people. His advice to “let your faith be fired, not shattered” resonated then and it resonates in every generation in times of confusion beyond our control.

His message reaffirms that Christians have a connection with the only One who does have control, and through faith we can approach the “great spring” to have that faith grow in us such that awesome adversities become growers of our faith, and not defeaters of our spirits: Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…neither height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of Good that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-36)

Today more than ever we need the “great Jar” to be filled with faith for confronting the many uncertainties in our world. The “great jar” is an open heart that desires to be filled by God for the peace that passes understanding. (Philippians 4:7), a peace that only He can give and that enables our faith to be “fired” instead of becoming “slimy or muddy.” Augustine wanted his devastated people not to turn inward and despair, but to fill up on the Spirit of Christ and know that faith can grow, and even be enlarged and even become strong. I need this message every day.

Love in Him,

Prue