Is your faith troubled by questions and doubts?  You are not alone.  Turn to the story of the father of a child with seizures in Mark 9:14-29.  The father brought his son to Jesus.  “If you are able,” he said, “take pity on us and help us.”  “If you are able?”  Jesus replied, “Everything is possible for him who believes.”  For the sake of his son, the man commits himself:  “I believe; help thou my unbelief!”  Even in the midst of faith, he struggles within himself.

Georgia went to her pastor with a concern. “Pastor,” she said, “sometimes when I’m saying my prayers at night I fall asleep right in the middle. Does God hear the prayers of someone who can’t even stay away when they are talking to Him?”   “Isn’t it wonderful, Georgia,” the pastor replied, “that God can take care of things without our direction.” Luther made a similar statement. “Isn’t it wonderful that I can sit down and have a glass of beer and God can carry on with running the world?” God is fully capable of carrying out His responsibilities without constant stick and rudder orders from us.

Like Georgia, we sometimes are troubled by questions and doubts. It is not simply the big WHY questions, like why would God let a three month old baby be shaken so badly in Corpus Christi that they weren’t able to save him. We do live in a broken world in which bad things do happen. No, it’s the niggling little doubts that plague us. A friend, a woman older than I, came to me after church last Sunday and said, “Pastor, pray for me. God doesn’t seem to be hearing my prayers.” You know, and I know, that there are many people here this morning, whom God hears more readily than a stumbling, bumbling preacher.

It isn’t simply those of us who are average every day Christians who at times struggle with faith. Even those who are recognized as leaders in the field of religion struggle from time to time. Take for example Mother Teresa, the little—barely five feet tall and maybe 115 pounds sopping wet—nun who left the comforts of a monastic community and set out to care for the poorest of the poor. She gathered up the dying from the streets of Calcutta. She formed a leprosarium. She taught their children. She founded a religious order of more than four thousand sisters. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. And people were shocked when her memoir revealed that she struggled with faith. “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convincing emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and pierce my very soul.” How could she not have doubts and questions when she saw what she saw and lived among what she lived among every day?

Or take for example the young Martin Luther, who could only conceive of God as a righteous judge, hovering like a vulture over humankind, ready to strike with punishment the slightest disobedience. That fear lead him to seek sanctuary in a monastery. It led him to starve himself and beat himself to the point of collapse. Driven by the requirement to confess every sin, he must have driven John Staupitz, his confessor, out of his mind—“wait, wait, I’ve remembered one more.” The young Luther could easily have destroyed himself.

The Gospel lesson today is about a desperate father. His son had seizures from childhood. I don’t know that you understand what it means to have a child who is subject to seizures. I knew a young girl who could not be left alone because it was impossible to predict when a seizure might occur. She slept in her parent’s room.   Either her father or mother had to accompany her to school. It was suggested that radical surgery might cure the seizures—radical surgery in the sense that part of her brain would be removed. For the sake of their daughter, the parent’s decided to take the risk. I sat with them during the operation. I visited the girl in the hospital on a daily basis. She came down with meningitis. She recovered from the meningitis and started rehabilitation. I watched that child improve week by week, and she continues to improve.

My young friend’s parents were willing to entrust their child into the hands of the surgeon. The desperate father in the Scriptures brought his son to Jesus in the hope that Jesus could do something for the boy. Interestingly, it revolves around a question of trust. “If you are able to do anything,” the father says, “have pity on us and help us.” Jesus replied “If you are able—all things can be done for the one who believes.” The father commits himself: “I believe; help thou my unbelief.” For the sake of his child, he believes, but he is still struggling within himself.

We want to experience God. We want to feel his presence. We look for a subjective reality. We want proof of his existence. As Elijah discovered God was not present in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. God was present in the sounds of silence. Not in some staggering, overwhelming event. Not when we have discovered God, but in the silence when peace descends on us and we are aware that God surrounds us. It is not a question of our holding tightly to God’s hand, but that God holds us tightly by the hand.

God’s reality is an objective reality. God simply is, as he pointed out to Moses. His existence depends neither on our belief or understanding. Jesus Christ lived, suffered, died, and rose from the dead. The entire second article of the creed was enacted on the stage of human history and observed by human beings. It happened. The Scriptures tell us it was necessary, because of the nature of human sinfulness. The Bible tells us that God chose to accept the death of Jesus Christ as a resolution of the problem of human sinfulness. The truthfulness of those events or the interpretation which the Bible chooses to place on them is not dependent on human acceptance.

Faith is not a matter of the reality of the events. Faith is our connection with those events, the realization that they apply to us. It is not a question of “if I believe hard enough, then God will reward me.” God is not Linus’ Great Pumpkin in the Halloween Peanuts cartoon, and we are not looking for the sincerest pumpkin patch. It is a matter of trusting in something that God has done for his own reason.

How often in the New Testament Jesus acts on the basis of the slightest hint of faith—sometimes he is willing to accept what we would consider mere superstition as a beginning of belief. Take for example the woman who sought to touch just the fringe of his robe in the hope that she could be healed of a long-standing medical problem. When Jesus spoke of faith the size of a mustard seed, he was indicating his acceptance of the frailty of human beings.

When parents submitted their daughter to a surgeon’s knife and then watched her struggle with meningitis don’t you think that they questioned themselves? Don’t you think that they asked themselves if they had done the right thing? I made a promise that day—a promise to a young girl. She had done therapeutic horseback riding before her time of surgery. I promised her that the first time that she was helped back on that horse I would be there. And I watched that day the smile on her face as she was led around the paddock.

A father brought his son to Jesus in the hope that Jesus might be able to do something for the child. It became a question of belief, of trust. For the sake of his son the father believed and yet even in the midst of his belief he cried out “help my unbelief.” Yes, at times we too stumble and question. In those moments we like the father must take a leap of faith and trust in the God who is dependent neither on our belief or understanding. A God who simply is and who cares for us.