Own Your Faith

I am one hundred percent sure that we have all been there before. By ‘there’, I mean that within a secular environment, the topic of religion has come up and there is somewhat of an awkward pause.

Allow me to elaborate. For example, say you are with a group of friends or work colleagues and religion comes up. None of them are particularly religious but you are. You can be one of three people.

The Silent:

Too scared to say anything against what may be considered the norm in our secular world, you keep your faith to yourself. This is no bad thing, I do stress. Faith is so personal that sometimes this is the most comfortable way to be.

The ‘Lets See’:

This too is no bad thing, I really do wish to stress this. This person sees how it goes by saying that they have a faith and may include what faith they have and sees how it goes from there. This can be ideal, especially with a group of colleagues where work is needed to be done or with a group of friends that are interested but perhaps not so interested that you need to tell everything.

The ‘I am’:

This person may have their doubts but will come out with I am … Christian, Catholic, etc… and may go on to say more of their faith than what genuinely meets the eye, breaking down some of the stereotypes that come with the religion they associate with. Maybe they would say where they worship, and so forth.

As previously mentioned, none of these are bad in fact, each of them are good in their own rights. I mentioned before that faith is personal to the individual, I believe this to be absolute. Futhermore, no one person is just one of these all the time, we all switch between all three depending on the who, what, why, when, where, and how.

I was at work one morning, happily whizzing about and doing my thing on the shop floor. It was between 8am and 8:30am. Any parent knows this to be the time where they need to get their kid to school, maybe picking up a forgotten lunch supply on the way. Anyway, I came across a mother and a young girl, the girl went ahead of the mother and was happily skipping ahead, when she suddenly stopped and turned, she pointed at her mother and loudly proclaimed:

“That’s my mummy and I love her”.

At the time of hearing this, I was happy and warm, the sort of fuzzy feeling one gets when they are overwhelmed with the cuteness of a parent and child together. Then I had a thought. What if we all proclaimed our love in that way? Now I am not saying that I am going to do exactly that in the middle of a busy store to my mother. At the age of 21, I think my mother would find that rather embarrassing (though perhaps lovely at the same time) from her daughter. Rather, what if we all loved fiercely and freely, without being afraid of what others may think. Going back to my previous statements above, whether we are silent (yet loving), a lets see how this goes (but loving) or able to proclaim I am … and yet still love and show that love, are we not doing the right thing?

Lets move this back to our everyday lives once again. Do we proudly love our family, friends, partners? Do we proudly love our job, our hobbies, our interests? To those with faith, do we proudly love our faith? Do we proudly proclaim, if only to ourselves, of this love? If not, then let us think of how to rectify that.

Loving and Good Father,

I ask that you help us in this day, week, month etc, to truly and proudly proclaim our faith hope and love in you. If only even to ourselves. Lord, give us the desire and the courage to see you at the heart of everything. We love you for what you do.