For as long as her parents can remember 11 year Brianna Carsy wanted a Brood horse, or a mommy horse to give birth to a baby horse that would become a racing champion. Now, it’s one thing to sit on Santa’s lap and ask for a pony, and then on Christmas day find under the tree a nice stick horse to ride around the house, because well, for most people a real horse is just impractical it’s another thing all together to actually get a real living, breathing baby horse on your doorstep. Well, call it being loving parents or helpless suckers, Brianna’s dad and mom bought her a Ohio standard breed foal that she named MJB GOT FAITH—MJB after the initials of the kids in the family and got faith because she believed in her little runt horse almost immediately. NOW the problem was this insistent child wanted her horse to race, even though it was small in stature and in no way from the right stock to even really have a chance at doing well in competition, but who can say no to a cute little girl with big blues. Sure enough MJB was brought to the qualifying of a local race and just barely was fast enough to be allowed into the competition. Then when the big day came somehow out of nowhere MJB actually won his first race, and then his second, third, and fourth and earned a place in the state championship. At this point Brianna’s dad said to her, “Baby if your horse finishes third you should be so thankful,” and she said, “ Daddy, if he finishes last I will be thankful, BUT he’s going to win.” And sure enough this pet horse with no pedigree won an Ohio championship and all it took was the faith of an 11 year old girl to make it happen.
We heard this morning from the Letter to the Hebrews that Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not yet seen. To have faith in God is to believe that He is active and present to us and the situations in our life even when we feel like if He really were paying attention He would do something to make things better. This struggle at times can challenge us to our core and yet this is how we grow into more than just Christian or Catholic by convenience but really take ownership of the faith that we profess. God desires us to choose to live it and that sometimes means that in our lives we go through difficulty that really puts into perspective the fact that life on this planet comes to an end and that life in Christ, eternal life is what we are made for. God remains faithful to us no matter what, but do we stay true to Him when the going gets tough?
We find a model of faith in Abraham who when asked to sacrifice his only Son, the one the Lord promised him that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, when Abraham was told to take Isaac up on Mt. Moriah and spill his blood, Abraham’s response wasn’t: God you are messed up first you ask me to leave the home that I love for this foreign land, then you tell me that finally my wife and I are going to conceive a child after our whole marriage we’ve been trying to do exactly that and now you want me to take this child YOU gave me and kill him, offer him as a sacrifice to you—God is it just me or do you need to maybe talk to a therapist. No, instead Abraham deduces from the goodness of God that if God is calling him to this sacrifice of his son, He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead. God is never leading us astray but only deeper in our awareness of how He desires for us to see how good He is.
My brothers and sisters I don’t know what it is you find yourself starring at right now, what you have been praying over or asking to see God relieve you from, but maybe just maybe He has given you your lot to allow you the opportunity to have faith that even this He desires to raise from the dead, to provide for you new life, a life of faith. When faith is lived, runt horses win championships, and men and women become saints.
