Musings from doubt

 Doubt... I'm sure we all know what doubt is.We've all doubted to some extent, whether it's about the bus turning up on time or something deeper. But if we are waiting for a bus, the doubt is going to be cleared up relatively soon. Other doubts may take a long time to be resolved, and may go away and then resurface over time. I was thinking recently about my faith, and how sometimes it feels that bits of it come apart, rather like when you take apart a lego model. If you keep on taking apart a lego model, eventually all you have are the individual pieces, which don't mean anything on their own. You just send up with a heap of bricks. And I wonder if that's what will happen with my faith if I dig into my doubt - I will take it apart until there is nothing left.  As I was mulling over this, feeling more that slightly panicky - would I end up not believing anything? What if I took it apart and God wasn't there anymore? I heard God say (don't ask me how I know t...

  When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Exodus 32:1, NIV When I have read this before, I have focussed most on the golden calf and what that says about my own idolatry. But what I noticed today was how the Israelites reacted.  Moses disappeared up the mountain for 40 days. I'm guessing he didn't tell anyone when he was coming down - did he know himself? So they had no idea how long to wait for, and eventually decided that he was a goner, and they should sort themselves out. I mean, I would have expected him to come down for dinner. Sound familiar? What they expected to happen did not happen. The person they expected to be there wasn't there. The experience they wanted didn't happen. They feel betrayed. I see myself in this story - right here, in the reactio...