19C19.   Wisdom 18:6-9.   The Hebrew people had sworn their commitment to God because they had the faith that God would never let them down.  “Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.”

Psalm 33.   “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.”  The Lord “is our help and our shield.  May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”

Luke 12:32-48.  In this Gospel Jesus is calling upon his people to enthusiastically prepare themselves to be called to judgement by acting in way that is pleasing to God, our Lord and Master. For those who do so, they will be rewarded; those who do not, they will be punished.  Jesus also makes it clear that there will be proportionality.  To the degree that we do not serve God’s will, we will to that degree be punished.  Finally Jesus says, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  In other words, those who have received more graces from the Lord, more will be expected of them.

Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19.  Believing that something is true because we put our trust in someone (God) who says and knows that it is true; but, not seeing or finding from our own investigation that it is true, is faith.  Abraham believed the promise God made to him, that from Abraham there was to be God’s own people, who were to be given their own homeland.  Abraham entrusted his future into the hands of God without having any evidence or proof that he had outside of the fact that God said it.

Seeing is not so much believing as it is knowing because we see for ourselves and have the truth. Faith is not k

nowing but trusting that some else knows.  Believing means that we don’t see or know the truth firsthand yet believe because we surrender our judgment into the hands of the one in whom we entrust our belief that they have given to us the knowledge of the truth, a knowledge that we did not have on our own.  Faith requires that we surrender the judgment of what is true to the one in whom we entrust ourselves. God knows firsthand but we do not.  We trust that God is passing on to us the truth that God himself knows.   Living each day trusting in God leads us to become people of a deeper and deeper faith in God because he shows his infinite faithfulness all the way to our heavenly homeland.  He is an ever faithful Father.  At times he allows our faith to be challenged as he did with Abraham in the case of his son Isaac; but the challenges will help us to be evermore trusting in the Lord, as he enables us to work through those challenges.  Isaac’s spared life was a symbol or sign to Abraham that God never fails those who entrust themselves to him.