When I sit down to blog, I often have no idea what the subject will be. I’ve slowly learned that I don’t need to know, that something will come along that will surprise me, that as I write, some deeply held truth will work its way into consciousness for the first time.
I don’t generally approach my days with this same comfortable not-knowing. I tend to view the day as a to-do list rather than a revelation of divine love and an invitation to participate in that love. With a to-do list, I can pretend to be in control. Showing up to a divine love party requires that openness called faith.
In her book Abounding in Kindness, Elizabeth Johnson says, “faith is first of all an existential decision rising up from your personal depths to entrust yourself to the Whither of your life, the living God.” Faith is a decision to trust.
To entrust ourselves to anyone or anything, including God, “to put [ourselves] into someone’s care or protection,” as the dictionary defines it, seems like a dicey proposition. God doesn’t appear to be in the protection business. There are those times when we improbably and uncannily emerge safe from the midst of danger, and then there is sickness, war, school shootings, hurricanes.
God’s presence, God’s unwavering care in the midst of all that is incomprehensible and painful is what we must choose to trust. “God protects us from nothing and sustains us in all things,” Jim Finley says.
Without this trust, we cannot enter the fullness of our lives. Johnson calls God the Whither of our lives because God is our destination, “that ineffable plenitude toward which we are journeying.” The Divine Love draws us toward itself and places our feet on the road, “summons and bears our thirsty minds and desiring hearts.”
Trust allows us to follow that summons, to recognize the divine love party for what it is and know that every moment we are both already in the presence of and traveling closer to our Host.
Note: The Elizabeth Johnson quotes were taken from the essay “Atheism and Faith in a Secular World,” pp. 20-34.
Being Finite 
Yes, it’s hard to find the “divine love party” (love that) in the middle of the day. I am remembering a fragment of a Rumi poem, but I can’t find it. “You must fall UP…”
Thanks, Rachel. I think it’s the best definition of “faith” I’ve read! (“Faith is a decision to trust.”) Does that mean the risk-takers are the most faith-ful?
I think it depends on what the motivation for the risk taking is. The same action could originate in hubris or in trust.
Teilhard saw creation as undergoing divinization – moving toward greater being, personhood, awareness and love. The Omega, which he posits as both the culmination and the animating force, is Divine Being. The heart of this vision of creation speaks to the sacredness of the reality we are enmeshed in. Your essay, and Elizabeth Johnson’s book both call for trust in the loving presence of God. Teilhard’s vision is one that facilitates this trust.