As you grow up you realise that some problems aren’t just going to go away. Some problems are quite big and threatening.

It’s now that faith really counts. To know that there’s someone looking out for you, who sees everything, knows what’s going on, knows how to sort it and bring something good and valuable out of it.

People criticise faith because they say it’s just a comfort blanket for people who can’t handle life. They’re so wrong. This is so much deeper than comfort. Faith puts you in painful sitautions. (Sometimes painful situations are required to sort out other painful situations.)

Faith isn’t just a thread of comfort that runs through my life, it’s more like a chain like the chains that those chain ferries use. Without my faith, my life loses its cohesion. With it, things have a focus, a destination.

And when the focus and destination disappear from view, at least you’ve got the gap where they were — that’s enough to give hope. Faith turns problems into fertile fields waiting to produce a harvest. Faith never allows you to have a victim mentality, it always enables you to trust that whatever you face has a meaning that goes beyond your own life and that it will be something that contributes towards your future. Faith shows me that the only option left to me is to take responsibility, it’s never a crutch that lets me cross my fingers and hope that the Bad Thing goes away.