I often tell people in my role as a pastor that we need to keep reading the Bible in order to keep exercising our faith. I think many of us have a tendency to think of faith as a static thing. Either I have it, or I don’t. But faith, as evidence of things not seen, is like a muscle that can grow or atrophy depending on exercising it.
I had a quite specific experience in my Bible reading last week that proved to require an exercise of my faith. It came in the form of one little concept in an obscure passage in an obscure book of the Bible.
Leviticus 6:12-13 says:
“The fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it; it shall not go out. The priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and he shall arrange the burnt offering on it and shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings. Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually; it shall not go out.”
And the immediate thought . . . How much wood would this take? Where do nomadic people in the desert get enough wood to keep a perpetual fire going and to burn sacrifices daily? The real question in that moment comes down to trust. I don’t even know the answers to my own questions. But the temptation will be to find the Scripture as lacking credibility at any given point. I know nothing about the amount of wood accessible to them. I know nothing about their plans to carry wood. I know nothing about how much wood they would even go through in an average day keep a perpetual fire.
These types of things point out more about me than anything about the text. The Bible is just there. Sitting on my lap holding out an account. I am the one who will approach it with distrust, skepticism, delight, curiosity, and/or faith!
This little exercise in considering the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness, looking for wood, carrying wood, and stoking a fire with wood, causes me to exercise my trust. Some things in Scripture pose a greater struggle than others, but all comes back to my trust in what I’m reading. The Bible says a man lived in a great fish for a couple few days. The Scriptures tells me God created. The Scriptures tell me the grave was empty. The Scriptures tell me there was a King over Israel named David. The Scriptures tell me that the Israelites kept fire going for forty years in the wilderness.
I am called to believe it. The curiosity and the thoughts about how it could’ve happened are all part of an exercise of faith. Doubt casts it off at a glance. Unbelief is looking for and expecting to find errors, mistakes, and insurmountable barriers to believability.
I am guessing that someone who heats their home with wood likely has a better understanding than I do about how much wood this would’ve taken. But I am not very concerned. Scripture doesn’t rise and fall on minor concerns. I have seen the fruit of His Word! I trust it by faith. I am not blind to it. I wrestle with it. But in the wrestling, His Word has won the match every time.
