Daniel was standing at the pantry door staring into a sea of cereal boxes. "Mom, I don't know what to eat. We don't have any good cereal." Those are the kinds of comments that automatically trigger the launch of parental discourse #943 entitled, "Why, when I was a kid, we had to eat the BOX! And we were grateful!" When I looked into the pantry, I found six boxes of cereal. Granted, with five kids, there's usually twice that many. It's typically a veritable smorgas-porridge in there. But the locusts (the other kids) had already descended and left only the healthy stuff. When Daniel said there weren't any good cereals, he really meant there weren't any that had more fructose and corn syrup than grain. No "Choco This" or "Fruity That." Instead it was "This Bran" and "That Bran." Granted, some of them were high-fiber enough to refinish furniture, but there were still what I thought to be some decent grain choices.

I probably don't need to tell you that Daniel isn't a teen yet. At nine years old, he hasn't yet learned the fine art of indiscriminate food disposal. I do have a couple of those sons of the teenage persuasion, and one of my biggest diet-monitoring challenges with them is trying to stop them from eating the boxes. I recently caught one of the boys snacking on mayonnaise. He was holding it about a foot over his head, squirting it out of a squeeze bottle right into his mouth. For breakfast.

Another day, my oldest son was eating leftovers from the fridge. "What is that?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, but it's fine."

"Fine" means whatever is in the container isn't swarming and it doesn't answer if you ask it a question. But would you eat leftovers you couldn't even identify? Now that's faith!

When Jesus talked about faith, he said that if we have even mini-grain sized faith, we can accomplish anything. He didn't exactly say we can eat anything, but he did say we can do anything. He said in Matthew 17:20, "I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Amazing, isn't it? The faith can be as teeny as a mustard seed! (By the way, mustard here is not connected in any way to that condiment-ingesting thing.)

But how do we figure out a sizeless faith? You can't hold faith in your hands. It doesn't make noise. You can't see it. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." Faith is trust in Jesus, even though we haven't yet touched him. It's having confidence in what he teaches us even though we haven't physically heard his voice. Faith is having a sure belief in him even though we've never seen him, trusting what his Word says about him with a firm confidence.

Much of faith-building is simply understanding the Father. He is immense. He's the Creator, the Alpha/Omega, Beginning and End. He is all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing -- all! He is always caring, always fair, ever trustworthy, ever faithful. When we recognize that our lives are in the hands of someone so completely able, we have nothing to fear. We can go boldly in any direction he leads.

Without understanding our Heavenly Father, our faith is small and we live in fear. How scary is it to think that succeeding in this life depends on us instead of an all-powerful God? What a wimpy and vulnerable way to live. No peace. No confidence. No lasting joy. It's like living in a bowl of over-soaked flakes, a life that can't hold up against circumstances. It's the exact opposite of the grain that "stays crunchy even in milk."

The more we know about our awesome God, the more mountainous our faith. And Jesus fills the life of faith with joy and satisfaction. Try it. It's better than finding an extra prize in your cereal box!

Incidentally, I went back to the store and bought Daniel some sort of "Choco-gravel," plus the prevailing sucrose-loaded flake of the week. I bought the fruity things too. Those were his favorites. He was so thankful I call them "Fruity-Gratitudies." I'm grateful, too -- grateful I don't have to eat them. I'll be shooting for a well-balanced spiritual breakfast instead -- something like "Mustard-seed Muesli."

Reviews: