Fr. Alexander has been talking in his Journals about time, about how eternity is not the end of time, but the gathering of it all up together out of its fragmentation. We live in this split second moment of the present (the “here and now”), we carry our pasts (hazily) about with us, and we worry about the unknown future. Such disjunction!

Here is St. Paul on faith (Hebrews 11):

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old received divine approval. By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear…

For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him…

For he [Abraham] looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God…

These all died in faith [Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah], not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

… And all these [so great a cloud of witnesses], though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

In some sense what is in the future is unknown to us. We walk in blindness. But we also walk in faith, knowing that God rewards those who seek Him, knowing that the foundations have been laid for a city whose builder and maker is God, knowing that a homeland of re-gathered time awaits us, when all will be made whole again. God favored the saints of old because they walked in faith. Those saints will be perfected in us who also walk in faith as strangers and exiles desiring our own better country.

Faith existed long before we did. The consummation of faith will still be going on long after we are gone from this world. Our own faith must hold together that continuum, by identifying our own past with the saints of old and the approval of God for them — His signs and His coming; by living our own present with thankfulness for all that has gone before, all that is now, and all that is coming; and by walking without blindness into the future, where we know God has prepared the promised city and homeland.

It’s not really so hard or complicated, is it? It just takes… faith… =)… which seems merely a sort of easy willingness to BE right here and now part of a very good whole.