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Audacious faith trusts in God’s promises and rests in God’s faithfulness even in the valley of dry bones, even in our dumbfounded stares into heaven, even in the ruins of the temple, even in our divided and disease-ridden and cynical world.
Audacious faith doesn’t require our certainty. It isn’t limited to joy and praise and thanksgiving, because God is faithful in all times and in all places, and there’s nothing we can do to earn that. By God’s grace, audacious faith holds all our human experience, including our doubt, lament, grief, anger, outrage, impatience and skepticism.
We are still waiting for a new heaven and a new earth, for that glorious day when death will be no more, when mourning and crying and pain will be not more. This tension is what we remember and celebrate in the Ascension – that the crucified, risen and ascended Christ’s work is still happening among us. Even when it seems impossible, God keeps God’s promises. May we celebrate and cling in audacious faith to God’s promises of restoration and return.
This message is excerpted from “Audacious faith” by Hannah Hawkinson in the May/June 2022 Gather magazine. Today is Ascension Day. Today we commemorate Matthias, apostle.