By Ronald Davis

In the world, assurance may be as simple as an oral promise (“I will”) or a monetary down payment on a future debt. Most of us would prefer the cash in hand! We have learned to distrust the simple word of another. That is sad.

Faith represents the trust we have in the word of another. For the Christian, faith means, “I believe God!” To disbelieve God would be sad, indeed.

The Sadness of No Faith

Bertrand Russell once said, with confidence, “We may define faith as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. . . . We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.” The biblical writer, with a better source and reflecting the experience of the many men and women he notes as examples, says, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Does evidence have to be seen? The scholars who translated the King James Version of the Scriptures said simply, in the same passage, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” [emphasis added]. Substance. Confidence. Assurance. Evidence. Beautiful words of faith.

The Beauty of Faith

Christina Rossetti certainly understood that some things have “invisible evidence.” In her classic poem for children, she writes, 

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you;

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I:

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

The life experiences of those stalwarts of faith—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, and others—of whom the Hebrews writer writes were all the evidence that writer needed to affirm what faith is and how sure it is. That evidence—and the experiences of multitudes of believers since—is all I need. Faith gives assurance. Of that, I am sure. 

Ronald G. Davis is a retired classroom teacher living in North College Hill, Ohio with his wife of 50 years, Ruth, his younger daughter, and her son, an 8-year-old shadowed by autism.