Little faith...

What do you do when your faith is at low tide? When prayer and/or scriptural meditation just don't dispel fear, doubt, or anxiety? When the words of Jesus "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" seem appropriate? I don't know about you but I listen to Bach. And not just any of his peaces but his organ fugues. For some reason that I can't articulate, Bach's fugues aren't just pieces of music for me they are descriptions of God's sublime majesty. And to my mind each is Bach's attempt to preach the gospel. Maybe one has to be a Christian to "get" this but I'm fairly certain that in all of Bach's organ music (even ones we might call secular, i.e not explicitly for worship) he was preaching to us through music.

It is a sorry state of affairs for Christians in the western world that we have so little sense of God's real presence -- the Holy Spirit -- in our lives. In former times we were very near the earth and all of its beauty and power (both good and ill) that getting in touch, spiritually speaking, was not so difficult. But not so much these days. Speaking of which, there is an interesting study by the Pew Forum on Religion and the Public Life that speaks about this issue, i.e. spiritual fulfilment, or lack thereof. More on that tomorrow.