Do You Believe in Angels?

After spending over 16 years in Catholic schools, attending church every Sunday (up until about 5 years ago) and even serving as a Eucharistic minister, I still struggle with faith. How do we know there is a Heaven? How do we know God has a plan for us? Where are the water-to-wine miracles? The elementary answer I've always gotten is that you just have to have faith.

But what exactly is faith and can it be defined? The older I get, I'm starting to see that faith is different for everyone. People use faith to deal with all different types of things--death, sickness, troubled times. And sometimes faith is just an everyday thing that people have.

I can't say that my own faith is rock solid. It's my nature to question things. But my faith has grown much stronger since my grandma, a faithful believer, passed away close to 5 years ago. Among other things, I listened to Vince Gill's song Go Rest High On That Mountain as a way to comfort myself. It's a beautiful song and these lyrics specifically made me happy:

Your work on earth is done
Go to heaven a shoutin'
Love for the Father and Son

Because that's how Grandma made an entrance.

And now, almost always after thinking about Grandma, I hear that song. It's happened at home, in my car during rush hour (which is weird--a 15 year old song that is slow and sad is not typical rush hour music) and at work. It always causes me to stop and smile. So that's my faith. That she's somewhere, still in-tune with her family.

I ran across this article today and think it's a wonderful example of faith. Whether people say it's true or a sun spot or a doctored image or scientifically not possible, who cares? It gave this mother reason to continue to believe. And that's the great thing about faith. It's what people do with it that counts.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28364813/?GT1=43001#storyContinued