Faith in the Unseen
"Faith is the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1
It’s amazing that a new Barn Swallow, never having experienced a southern summer, migrates toward it in the fall. How do they know it's even there? They have no personal memory of it. Their parents can’t tell them. How do they know to travel toward warmer climes, to a place they have never experienced? In other words, what is the swallow’s “evidence of things not seen”? An impulse moves him that neither he nor science can explain. It is an impulse absent of experience, leading the bird to anticipate things hoped for. For the newly migrating swallow, the impulse is later proved good. It strives to reach a place never known. Even more so, the believer has an impulse to fly beyond their present home. They are born in the winter, live in the spring, summer, and fall, and die in the winter. Yet they constantly seek another country, a summer that is not here and now. So, believers fly,
through cold, through the dark,
through trial,
through rough blasts of sorrow,
through chills of contempt,
through hours of weakness and weariness. Until when? They have reached their home.
Is it an unreasonable flight? Yes, to the unbelieving. There is no reason for it to them. Why? Because it is higher than reason; it is "the evidence of things not seen.” Dear one, listen to what this text is saying. Faith comes before reason. Reason is against the swallow’s migration. Why would he leave all he knows and fly to a place he’s never been? The sparrow could argue it’s all a delusion. Why? Because the sparrow’s never left. Yet the swallow is proved right.
And so, the believer will be. Deep in the child of God, because of the Spirit’s work, there is a new impulse above reason, before reason, called faith. Reason has taken away much from the unbeliever. But for the child of God, the Spirit has given an impulse of unrest. Do you know it? A deep desire to migrate towards a heavenly city, not made with hands? The believer, like the swallow, has a God-given impulse to seek a rest with which he has no experience. But he has foretastes. We hear others speak of “songs in season.” But the believer, by the Spirit, has a song before the season. They trust the calm promised beyond the storm. And fly to it. Why? Because “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.”