Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I love the hymn How Firm a Foundation. The notion of our faith in Christ being something upon which we build the rest of our lives resonates with me.

I’m coming, though, to see faith slightly differently. You’ll see below my favorite picture from Nepal. It shows an ancient tree’s roots pushing through the foundation of an ancient building in Durbar Square. You see the roots coming up around the building and gradually, slowly, and inch by inch claiming the building as its own.

This is feeling to me more like what our faith can be. It’s perhaps less a foundation than it is the tree. So many of us make other things our foundation. We make our choices based on status, ease, money, or some other cultural criteria.

Faith, the kind lived over time, gradually breaks away at those false foundations. It cracks us open and slowly, gradually, and inch by inch claims us. There will be moments when faith breaks in, unexpectedly. There will be others where what felt insurmountable gives way to patient hope. If you look at the picture, you will see that the building is not destroyed - it is held up in a new way. It has taken on new strength as those strong roots are intertwined with the old bricks and mortar.

May we find the roots of the true vine claiming us and disrupting our old self by yet another inch this week.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert