The Way of Abraham in Faith

"The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting" -- Oswald.

My faith must be a faith of everydayness. Many of my favorite writers find beauty in the everyday, ordinariness of life -- Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Pablo Neruda. Neruda even wrote a series of poems -- Ode to Common Things -- like socks and ironing and salt.

I think the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 must also have found beauty in the everyday, not only beauty but heaven. Most of them did not have the written Scriptures. They did not get to witness the coming of the Messiah, and they did not have the Holy Spirit. They had to hold tightly to unseen promises. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. . . They were longing for a better country -- a heavenly one," Hebrews 11:13, 16.

A short poem by Ted Kooser speaks to me of this bringing the divine down into the everyday:

If you can awaken
inside the familiar
and discover it new
you need never
leave home.

Local wonders.