Day Twenty


Kneeler 65

Hebrews 11

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval.
3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Con — fid (Latin) with faith

and from Sarah's Lent Two sermon:

Confidence in Christ — what does it mean to have confidence in Christ? In an attempt to get my head around this question I turned to my trusty thesaurus to find alternatives to the word confidence. This is what I found:

To me it seemed as though there was a strange automatic pairing that occurred amongst these words — conviction and belief are both strong words with a certainty and clarity about them. They are decisive — they make strong statements — this is what I believe, this is my conviction. They are about me - here and now. Faith and hope on the other hand are more reflective. It is almost an intention rather than a statement of certainty. To have faith and hope in something or someone is to be looking to the future and conjures images of freedom such as a bird flying across the sky or the flow of water in a river — the end of the journey is unknown. The third pair of words is reliance and dependence. These are not strong words like belief or conviction, nor are they free like hope and faith — in fact my first reaction, and possibly a reflection on today’s society, is the negativity of these words. To be dependent or reliant on something or someone else depicts weakness, vulnerability or powerlessness. To rely or depend on someone or something means that regardless of will, you must or are forced into trusting them/it. However, the more I considered these final words, I realised that as personality traits or characteristics, they are positive and strong. Then I looked at the word confidence itself and realised how it can incorporate all these things — it is a word packed full of meaning — it is strong, free, vulnerable and trusting.