There are many people in this world who have great difficulty placing faith in a Higher Power. I’ve seen many of them come through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. For most of them, it’s due to the fact they don’t have visual proof of a Higher Power working in their lives. But what many of them don’t realize is that they are already placing faith every single day in quite a number of other things where they have no visual proof there either.
Take for example a mobile phone. How many of us truly understand how they work? Don’t most of us just pick it up and place faith that the text or call to someone will travel through the airwaves and connect to our intended recipient? In that action alone, aren’t we placing faith in the workings of that phone itself even though we don’t truly understand how it works?
This same principle holds true with so many other technologies that exist today. Most of us really don’t know how any one of them fully works as well. From gadgets to appliances to vehicles, there are quite a number of those things that we use day in and day out. Yet as we utilize them, aren’t we placing faith in them to work even though we don’t completely know how any of them works either?
So why is it such a leap then to place faith in a Higher Power?
When I came into the rooms of recovery for my addictions, I struggled greatly with my faith. My sponsor helped me to see this principle on how I was placing faith in many other things each day. I also saw how many recovering individuals were placing faith in a Higher Power. It seemed to be working for them, as they were happy, joyous, and free from their former addiction-based life and at the time, I wasn’t.
My journey to finding this faith in a Higher Power began with that sponsor. I placed faith in her and the Higher Power she believed in only because she was extremely positive, upbeat and had been sober for a very long time. Something obviously was working in her life to have gotten her to that place, so was it that much of a stretch to have faith in that?
Eventually, after a period of time in maintaining that faith in my sponsor’s beliefs, I found it for myself. Today I have faith in my own Higher Power even though I still don’t understand how my Higher Power works. I clearly see now that this type of faith is no different than anything else I place faith in daily throughout my entire life.
The bottom line is that every day we place faith in something in this world that we don’t fully grasp or understand how it works. Is it really that much of a stretch to place that same type of faith in a Higher Power then? Think about that the next time you pick up your cell phone and are having a conversation with another person who is miles and miles away from you. Somehow the two of you are communicating, and this is truly no different that what would happen if you place faith in a Higher Power.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson