“Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it. Faith is the reason we remember great people who lived in the past.
It is by faith we understand that the whole world was made by God’s command so what we see was made by something that cannot be seen.” – Hebrews 11:1-2
I found a great story that illustrates these verses:
“There was a local rancher who needed one faithful ranch hand who ran an ad in the paper and received two applicants the next morning.
He invited both out to his ranch and remembered that his wife had provided him the perfect test to determine which one he would hire based on their faithfulness.
He hired them both at the same rate of pay and requested they take a couple of his daughter’s Easter baskets and pour water in them from his well until he returned from town.
Both thought the job was rather odd. What was the use of trying to fill a woven basket with water? It would all just leak out?
After dumping a few buckets of water into the basket, and getting the expected results, one of the hired hands exclaimed, “Why are we doing this useless work? As soon as we pour the water in, it runs out the sides. We’ll never fill the baskets!” What’s the use?!
The other hand answered, “But the rancher must know that and he’s still paying us, right? Why he wants us to do it is up to him, not us. He must have his own purpose for having us do this that we don’t understand.”
“Well, I’m not doing such foolish work,” replied the complainer as he threw down his basket and walked away.
The other man continued until he had nearly drained the well. As he began to allow the bucket to descend again, he saw something that glimmered with the reflection of sun. He sent the bucket down for one last bucket of water scooping up the glimmering object.
Pouring the water in the Easter basket as the ranch owner had instructed him, the water leaked out and there at the bottom of the basket was a beautiful diamond ring that the rancher’s wife had lost the last time she had gone to the well to retrieve water.”
Great story, right?
We live in a world much like those Easter baskets, leaking all kinds of bad circumstances that seem to do nothing but soak into the ground.
But God knows there are precious ones, like you and I, like the ring, that He is trying to save.
God enlists you and I and dares us to have faith in Him to do what He has called us to do for the Kingdom, even when some of it doesn’t make any sense to us.
