Are we waiting to fully understand God before we will allow ourselves to believe? Do we hope he is who scripture says He is, but need more proof? Some of us don’t want to admit that God exists because our own limited intelligence, ability to conceive, or because our lack of understanding who He is, keeps getting in our way. Well, hope is fine, but it isn’t the same thing as faith. Hope is seeing a box, and wanting to believe that God might be in it. Faith is our ability to take the vapor of that hope, and treat it as if it were real. Faith is the first step towards believing… it opens the box in which we have placed our hope that God exists, and allows us to peer inside expectantly. Belief, on the other hand, is seeing the evidence of Him in the box, and realizing that He is not only there in its confines, but is in everything that surrounds it… and abides in us too. So today let’s think about where we are on this path from hope to faith, to belief, and into the eternal presence of God beyond.