There was once a man who was crossing the desert in the days of the early American Pioneers. He had run out of water and was dying of thirst. Suddenly, he spotted a water pump near an abandoned shack. He inched his way to the pump, mustered up enough strength to work the handle, but nothing happened; no water came. Then he noticed a jug near the pump with a note attached. The note read: “There is just enough water in this jug to prime the pump, but not if you drink some first. This well has never gone dry, even in the worst of times. Just pour in the water from the jug and pump the handle quickly. After you have satisfied your thirst, refill this jug for the next thirsty person who comes along.”
What should the man dying of thirst have done? The contents of the note called for complete trust in the person who wrote it. If the dying man followed the instructions, he ran the risk of pouring out all the water from the jug into a pump that might fail. He was being asked to respond to the message in complete faith. He was being asked to believe, without reservation, the absolute truth of the message.
When you and I take a step of totally trusting in God to take care of us, when we have no idea how God could possibly do something for us under the present difficulty, God responds. God gives life to our faith.
But the faith that God is calling us to today is one where we have to trust in him without knowing how God is going to care for us.
Faith without works is dead. Our faith can easily (at and at times, with difficulty) be translated into works when we see how many in our world are suffering involuntarily. They are the poor, the homeless, the victims of oppression and war and other injustices.
We cannot allow the magnitude of social evils to overwhelm us. We must always live by the light of Christ and the hope of the resurrection. As the bishops of our country stated once: “Christian hope is strong and resilient, for it is rooted in a faith that knows the fullness of life comes to those who follow Christ in the way of the Cross.