Show me the way of the Mustard Seeds

I have asked for years that my faith would grow.

I have prayed that I would, I could have blind confidence that good things would happen, that God would hear my prayers and that they would avail. But years of seeking, asking, knocking has seemed to leave me with less faith than with which I had begun.

Four years of church revitalization has left me both jaded and demoralized. Some days are better than others, but the bad days are louder than the good ones. Paul and I speak often when the days are hard and long and choke us, and we have lately found ourselves having conversations that match our days: hard and long and choking.

There was a poem I came across last year, a few lines that told the underbelly truths of a life lived alongside the Lord. I keep a photo of it in my phone. And on those hard and long days, after those hard and long talks, I like to search it out and read it. It tends to me, a patch of beauty among thorns, a taste of sweetness in bitterness. I wanted, and needed, to be reminded of the paradoxes of faith. I wanted the poet to show me the way of mustard seeds, small things growing big, and unanticipated endings. I wanted to feel words as a sturdy finger placed beneath my chin and lifting up my heavy head.

Instead, I found a screenshot from an old friend from last year. It was June, and at that time our minds were still reeling from the months prior. The events of the previous winter haunted us, and I felt spooked around every corner. I winced at every bit of news, every text, every phone call. Ghostly pain—it was not quite real, but also not quite fake. It was a pain remembered, a wound still healing. But June brought something brighter. It brought us an opportunity for hope, the specifics of which I won’t be sharing. But it was hope, bright and beautiful. It was a kindness extended to us, wise and whimsical.

So much of our time in Cleveland has been marked by cloud-gazing. Seeing the figures form and morph above our heads, and squinting to make out their shapes. The shapes are always changing and re-forming, though. Cleveland has mostly felt like a moving target, and we strain ourselves to know when to draw back and where to take aim. I told the aforementioned friend about this new inkling we had, this new silver living we spotted. They responded by saying, “That is a beautiful, wonderful gift God has just given y’all. That could be amazing. You didn’t have that yesterday, and today you do. Don’t let fear of your worst idea stop you from trusting that God can do abundantly more than you can think or imagine.”

We are a year out from this exhortation now, and I look back at my 2019 self with plenty of pity. 2020 me sees that it was not a gift that we were given. It was much less than a promise. And more, my worst idea then was not the worst that would end up coming. My friend was rightly suggesting that I trust God. We did trust God. And he decided to take from us more than 2019 Sarah could have imagined.

I was angry when I reread that text. Angry that my friend served as a hype-man to blind and foolish hope, and angry at how much more empty my hands feel now than they did last year. Sometimes it seems that every time a shoot sprouts from my planted mustard seed, the whole plant gets uprooted and thrown to the fire. I wish I knew how to protect my mustard seed better.

But I did find the poem I was looking for. And I let the words “ The more I feel the more I think that God himself has brought me to this brink, wherein to have more faith means having less.” They poured over me like warm water, soothed me like the sound of rain on a tin roof.

I have written a lot on faith, or my lack thereof, over the passing years. I wish I had some revelation, some lesson I have learned, but I don’t. I still repeat to myself “to have more faith means having less.” And I grit my teeth and I hope, I hope, I hope that the little I sow now will reap largely one day. But at the end of the day, today, I do not know.

Faith is tricky and a little eerie. Some people, like my mom, have faith in spades. They muscle through hardship not without bruising, but without complaint. I, on the other hand, dig my heels in. I cry, and I complain. I bemoan that what I see before me isn’t what I thought I would get, and I grieve unmet expectations.

The fact of the matter is that Job’s life erupted into chaos with little reason other than that God knew Job’s love for him would endure and the devil was unconvinced. Jeremiah was still tossed into a cistern though he obeyed God. And Jesus was still forsaken, still entombed, still suffered incomprehensibly.

It does us no good in our spiritual formation to pretend that the bad things always turn around, or that good things are always waiting for us, at least on this side of heaven. There’s a middle ground somewhere between fatality and blind optimism, and I hope to get there one day. I remain too close to fatalism and my friend veers too close to blind optimism. For now, I will do my best to see each day, each circumstance, for what it actually is: a gift that won’t be ungiven. I’ll take each moment for what it is, and I’ll look at the things that have been taken from us, and know that God’s hand was behind it. After all, knowing he is the one taking away is an act of faith in and of itself.

“the more I think the more I feel reality without reverence is not real

the more I feel the more I think that God himself has brought me to this brink wherein to have more faith means having less. and love’s the sacred name for loneliness

I speak a word I have not spoken and by that word am broken open, a cry entirely other entirely mine.

in league with the stone of the field I am by being healed.”

— Christian Wilman, Stones of the Field