WE ALL LIVE BY FAITH

after lunch with Jan and two new friends from Taiwan, I walked a few blocks into an area of many small shops that sell a variety of "hardware". I found what I needed and then tried to catch a taxi home.The ones that drove past were all occupied.
Then an elderly woman sitting on the sidewalk, pointed at the motorbike beside her and made the motion of driving it. I nodded and her nice looking grandson popped up and handed me a a typical Vietnamese helmet - not much more protection than a hat. "Motorbike taxis" are cheap and found on many corners of the city. They cost less than half a taxi fare and are usually driven by older men who can't find other jobs. So I hopped on behind the young man and we drove two kilometres to the market near our apartment.
I paid him 50 cents, bought two mangos and a pineapple and walked home from the market.

I don't do this often - putting my faith in a cheap motorbike and a total stranger! Taxis are safer. Two friends in the past two months have experienced motor bike accidents.

How foolish you might say: putting your faith in a stranger - with your life at stake in Saigon traffic.But we all live by faith every day.Yet the myth is still presented by otherwise intelligent people that religious people live by (ignorant?) faith, while secular people do not.

We all live by faith: in little everyday things like trusting an unknown motorbike taxi (believing he will keep me safe); walking into an unknown building believing it won't collapse; eating food in a new restaurant believing it is not contaminated; and in the most important things of life, like how did our world begin, what is our purpose on earth and what happens to us after death?
We all have to live and we all have to die. And we all must choose to live and die by faith in something or someone. For ten minutes today, I put my faith in a stranger and his motorbike. For life and eternity I am convinced the best faith object for life and death is Jesus Christ. All other alternatives take more faith and look pretty weak compared to the evidence for Christian faith and what Christ offers.