Reflection This Week
DOUBT

   In our prayers every Sunday, and hopefully in our personal daily prayers, we pray for the people of Swaziland, one of our companion Dioceses. We pray especially “for relief from [the] famine and drought” that are ravaging that country.  Lack of water produces no produce and that causes malnutrition. Add that to a country already devastated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and one can only imagine what suffering these people must be enduring. It makes our snow-upon-snow-upon-sub-zero-wind-chills seem like a walk in the park in comparison.

   Thus, it was a real Freudian slip, I think, when Doug Anderson, leading the Prayers of the People, prayed, “for relief from famine and doubt”, quickly caught himself and said “drought”. One has to wonder how the people of Swaziland cope, how they manage to keep the faith with so much suffering and death, relentless suffering and death and with no end in sight. They pray and they pray and they pray and we pray with them and still the people suffer and die.

   We wonder, they must surely wonder, where God, their God, our God, is in all of this? Perhaps they are even tempted to wonder if there is a God, or wonder what kind of God would allow so much suffering for a people who have done nothing to deserve what is happening to them, who, in fact, certainly deserve to be rewarded for their faith. But no such visible rewards are present or even on the horizon.

   I cannot even begin to imagine the conditions in that country. I do imagine that doubt, even grave doubt, must be there amidst all this drought and disease and death.  Their faith is surely being tested to the ultimate degree. No one of us would take them to task were any one of them to be pushed over the edge and give up on God because it seems God has given up on them.

   One does not have to live in ungodly circumstances, however, to live on the edge, to have one’s faith be so fragile that an iota of doubt will be all that it takes to give up on God and walk away. As strong as we think our faith is, it does not take much for doubt to begin to rear its head, not much at all. We believers always walk a tight rope, always in danger of falling off. There is a fine line between belief and unbelief. Given the circumstances, I suspect many of the people in Swaziland are walking that line and teetering on that rope. We would be were we one of them.

   Doug’s slip of the tongue reminded me that faith, my faith, is a precious gift and that I must not either take it lightly or for granted. It’s strong now, but all is going well. I am so abundantly blessed, so blessed, and I cannot understand why. I have done nothing to deserve those God-given gifts but neither have the people of Swaziland done anything to deserve what seems to be a dearth of them. The circumstances are entirely the opposite, but they and I can both ask, “Why me?”

   I have no answer. I can only give thanks to God for the gift of my faith and pray more and more each day for the people of Swaziland that they be relieved from the famine and drought – and disease – that has plagued them for so long. I pray that they not give into doubt but remain faithful to the God who loves them and who expects us to show our love for them not simply with our prayers but with every visible means of support we can muster.   WJP