October 2025: Faith Amid Failure?
Hockey season is upon us! Happy October to you and all your loved ones! Clearly, I am ready for hockey season to return once again (October 9th!). Once, several years ago, I included in my sermon the trust that Red Wings fans like me have in Steve Yzerman to bring back glory days to the organization. That trust has been waning of late, and it is a hard thing to have protracted trust amid continual failure. Call me a pessimist, but even though the team is better this year, I still think the playoffs will elude us.
How do we have hope while experiencing things that are less than hope-inducing? How do you have faith in the middle of circumstances that look dire? One of my favorite fantasy characters puts it this way “Belief isn’t simply a thing for fair times and bright days, I think. What is belief – what is faith – if you don’t continue in it after failure?” The character, Sazed, continues to have belief in the ideas of his friend even when it looks like he has met total failure.
Even greater (and real), how do we who have faith continue to have hope and belief in the fact that God is still in control of the world when we see so much pain and misery all around? I would clarify that pain and suffering in the world is not the failure of God to be God, but rather the failure of humanity to live as he would intend for us. But that doesn’t change the fact that if we were in control, only good things would happen. At least that's what we seem to believe.
Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Often, we imagine this verse to means that things will go well for us as God’s people in our day to day lives, but Paul is speaking of a greater picture. Paul begins this section of Romans 8 by saying that he knows that the future glory that is coming is not worth comparing to the sufferings of the present time. In other words, even in the times of failure, we remember that God – in the future – will work all things for the good of his people.
When I think about this part of scripture, what comes to my mind is the Aaronic Benediction that we often use to close the service (I also talked about this at my installation a little over 4 years ago!). “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.” “Peace” for the Hebrew people had the connotation that everything is in the right place. Creation will be established in a way that is totally and completely right.
We know that when Jesus returns and makes all things new, that newness will be characterized by “rightness,” or a lack of sin. There, at that time, will be the promised perfect peace of the benediction and Romans 8. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet simply means that it is still on its way. Like Sazed, we have faith exactly in those times of what seem to be failures on God’s part to give us peace because we remember that it is still coming.
And, for the record, the same is true for me and Stevie Y too. I believe that the glory days will return to the Wings. But even those days aren’t worth comparing to the time when the heavens and the earth will be made new, and Jesus will be in the center of all things for all time. (Rev. 7:17)