The Letter to the Hebrews offers one of the most eloquent definitions of faith in scripture: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”

There’s a great wonder in the story of Abraham that's more astonishing every time you read it. Before he encountered the God who was most certainly not the God of his fathers, Abraham was an old man faithful to one woman all his life and together they bore no children.

You know that if the house owner had known what night the burglar was coming, he wouldn’t have stayed out late and left the place unlocked. So don’t you be slovenly and careless. Just when you don’t expect him, the Son of Man will show up.

While you cannot expect to go from an empty to a full faith instantly, you can, like the vigilant servant in the gospel story, live with the intentionality that faith demands, grow in faith, and be ready for what life sends your way, even if it’s unexpected.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

The world is more than what you see; a spiritual reality underlies it. Faith is staking your life on the promise of that reality, as Abraham knew, and on hope and trust in the promise that you are headed to “a better place,” “a heavenly one,” a city God has prepared for you.

With so much emphasis on work and consumption in American culture, it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that “you are what you earn.” This attitude creates a lot of anxiety, leaving us constantly worried about our financial worth and feeling devalued if our “earning power” drops or if we are not part of the wage economy.

The people follow the example of those above them. —Chinese proverb