December 6

 ‘I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the Earth.’ – Genesis 9:13
I remember distinctly, a hot summer afternoon when I was about eight or nine years old. I was watering the garden with the enthusiasm that is expected of a boy who is doing a chore when he’d rather be playing. As the water poured out of the hose, I looked up at Heaven and said, ‘God, if you really exist, make the water from my hose hang in mid-air!’ Guess what…nothing happened.
When I look back on that episode now, I can only laugh. I mean, how childish was the expectation I had? Of course God was there. Why did I expect Him to amuse me just to prove His existence when the proof of His existence was right there in front of me in the form of His beautiful creation in each flower that was being unceremoniously doused with cold hose-water?
As juvenile as this episode is, I wonder how much of our adult faith is issued in challenge to God? ‘If you help me get this job, I’ll know you’re really there?’ ‘If you were really there, why would you have let me get a flat tire on the highway at midnight?’ This reciprocal relationship we ask of God is yet another example of our self-centered view of this world. Not only do we believe that God’s will is always discernable, but we seem to think that it is also malleable to fit our own whims.
What’s more, when we express a demand for God to ‘prove’ Himself in order to ‘win’ our faith, we are in essence asking Him to come to us. God already did that in the form of His Son Jesus the Christ. He came to us when He made the covenant with Noah in the form of the rainbow after the flood. He came to us in the form of the covenant with Abraham. The signs of God’s covenant with Man are evident throughout the bible.
If we are to grow our faith in God, then we must meet Him halfway. When we accept the responsibility of being a temple for the Holy Spirit we are accepting the responsibility for growing our faith. We no longer need signs and miracles to sustain us, we come to trust and accept God’s will for what it is. We, as primarily physical creations, nurture our spiritual expression to meet God, just as He, primarily a spiritual being nurtures His physical creation.