Article February 21, 2011 Issue

A healing faith

By John Rinnert

Christ Jesus once said to his disciples, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matt. 17:20).

Do these words apply to us today? We might be tempted to look down on that mustard-seed-sized faith that Jesus spoke of, living as we do in an age of great knowledge and science. (A mustard seed, by the way, is about 1/16"—the size of this dot ●) Where is there room for such faith among human intellectualism, intelligence, and academic success? Yet, throughout the Scriptures, in stories and in parables, the Bible develops the idea of a growing faith. As I’ve studied and thought about such accounts, the concept of faith has become fuller and more beautiful, and I’ve better understood the importance of nurturing it.

I’ve also begun to associate a mustard-seed faith with the manna that fed the children of Israel in the wilderness. To me the most interesting thing about that story is that even though the people didn’t know what the manna was, it still sustained them (see Ex. 16:11–15). Like manna, faith as a grain of mustard seed might begin small and undeveloped—it hasn’t been fully understood—yet it is still effective.