The formation of our faith very much like how a rock would be formed. We are often told that we need to develop rock-solid like faith if we want to be close to God and get through the storms of life in confidence by trusting in His mercy and plan. But forming this kind of faith doesn’t happen overnight. I have been pondering about this for sometime, in light of everything that I have gone through over the past couple of months – how does one really build rock solid faith? I was asking this because I feel sometimes I have done everything I can from a spiritual means and also from my own intellect and efforts. It feels as though I am doing a lot and yet things still feel the same and over time I don’t even know if I am even doing the right thing. Is this how God wants to grow my faith?
I started to ponder a little more on this question – how do you build rock solid faith, and I slowly begin to look at the natural world for clues. Perhaps God’s creation could tell me something.
The formation of rocks happens in 3 ways – igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Without going to too much of the details all 3 formation have 4 major themes in common.
First, They all have some form of base, in which they have some fundamental substance already in existence to start of with (whether its lava/magma, mineral deposits or other rocks).
Second, they all go through some pressure (heat or air) through the formation process and the third is all of them transform/change from their previous state to a new material state.
The final theme that these 3 formation process had in common is time. These transformation processes take a considerable amount of time to harden the material after the transformation process. It’s these 4 commonalities, substance base, pressure, transformation and time are the building process that makes rocks hard and solid.
And it is what that got me thinking about my own life. God has blessed us all with the gift of life, with intellect and wisdom and with talents and abilities. These form our substance base. However staying at that level is not enough. Being a liquid magma doesn’t produce rock solid material faith even though you may have the essential substance in place. It requires the necessary pressure (heat, air, escaping gases) that allows it to transform over time to become a rock.
Its the same with faith. We need the pressures of life not to break down our hearts and spirits, but to transform us over time to become more dependent on God and have rock solid faith. Our pressures in life may come in different ways shape and form. But that in some ways irrelevant as today it can be about the job that you worry about, tomorrow its about relationships and the next day it could be about health and finances.
Irregardless of the pressures of life, the ultimate aim of pressure is to transform us into having rock-solid faith that is built on God. And that happens over time through constant prayer, scripture reading and frequenting the sacraments. That’s the transformation process in which our trials and difficulties are sanctified to make us grow stronger in faith over time. Yes it can be long., it can be painful, but just like the law of nature, the transformation does take place and the materials eventually do get transformed from one state of being to another. That’s how rocks are made and that’s how we can also develop rock solid faith. And just like the rocks, we too will be transformed from one state of being to another, over time through the transformation process of God’s grace, from men and women of little faith and belief to that of people of God with rock-solid faith.
My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing – James 1:2-4
