Game shows to kids in the 90's are what reality shows are to kids today. I have many a fond memory of watching Wheel of Fortune, Press your Luck, $100,000 Pyramid, Price is Right and a host of others with my family as well as more kid centered ones like Double Dare, Guts!, and Legends of the Hidden Temple. Words cannot explain how much my neat freak, OCD self wanted to run through the house in Finders Keepers and just trash everything while I looked for the hidden item or how insanely fun it would be to run through a store throwing hams in a cart and zooming around the corner just before the buzzer went off in Supermarket Sweep.

Without much difficulty I could picture myself in almost every single show I watched except for one, Name that Tune. I would sit in amazement as two people would battle back and forth claiming how quickly they could name a song. I can do it in 5 notes, well I can do it in three, I can do it in 1, and then the two words came that closed the negotiations, "Prove it." My mind still does not fully comprehend this skill, mainly because some of the biggest moments of insecurity in my life occur when I'm in the car and my husband asks "what's this song" after just a few notes have been played. Even when my children can answer in record time, I still have no clue. Even if it's familiar, even if it's something I have heard a million times before, I more often than not need to wait for the words to appear to fill in the gap that the notes on their own can't.

Recently, while reading research articles for a grad school assignment, I again encountered the need for proof. When reading an article about the value of positive emotions, one sentence stuck out to me, "people experiencing positive affect perform better on this test than people in neutral states." I'm not sure how intelligent of me it was to have written the words "well duh" in the margins, but I could not help myself. Did it really take a scientific study to prove that if someone is feeling positive, if someone has been uplifted by another in one manner or the other, they actually perform better? This was not the only example I came across in my readings, over and over I was given the opportunity to see how little people believe if there is not science to back it up, even the most, in my opinion, common sense of things. Why is that, I began to ask, when really I already knew the answer. We want proof.

Believe me, there is full understanding of the need for scientific research in many realms so that strides can be made in the advancement of medicine, architecture, therapy, etc. Lives have been saved, civilizations built, and relationships mended through trial and error and the improvement of one theory based on that of another. Without documented research there is nothing to build upon, nothing to improve, nothing to pave the way early for others later on. There is a place for proof, but within us we most hold onto another thing as well. You see, besides the fact that the sheer time involved in scientifically proving every aspect of life before making any decisions would cause not many decisions to be made, needing proof for all things results in the lacking of a most important part of life, Faith.

Faith may be the belief in something for which there is no proof, but Faith is also the belief in something that is based on an unbreakable promise, and God's promise will always outweigh man's proof.

Every single word God spoke or left with us in His Word was a promise of what will come, what He will do, and of who He is and not once in all of time has He broken any of those promises. In fact, this great Covenant Keeper always goes a step further and secured them for us once and for all with Christ, as Hebrews 8 tells us. That covenant is the relational emphasis to the overwhelming number of promises.

No, the way His promises are fulfilled, did not, and still do not always happen in the ways our minds can imagine or even comprehend. God reminds us, again through Isaiah, that our thoughts are not His thoughts and that our ways are not His ways. His thoughts are higher. His ways are higher. All the rain and snow that is coming down on the earth upsetting our plans and causing floods and annoyance, well He is using it to water and cause growth so that it can accomplish in us what He needs it to. From it will not come briers and thorns, but from it will come trees that stand tall and can be seen from afar and will be everlasting.

Even Jesus, who was perfectly dependent on His Father, who was perfectly in tune with God’s will, whose prayer life kept him in direct contact to fulfill His Father’s plan, even he himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest that if it was possible let the cup be taken from him. But, just because we would choose a different way, an easier way, to fulfill the promise does not mean that God ever broke His and like Jesus on that same night, sometimes our only response can be “but not my will but yours be done.” Jesus never doubted that God’s promise true, but in His humanity He showed us that he understood the hard that comes sometimes for God’s promises to be accomplished.

This is what makes me understand the need for proof, even my need for proof. No matter how much I may roll my eyes at some of the research I come across, I myself know how much I want proof in my own story that everything will be ok, everything will work out. Even with the promise I am assured of, I want that second assurance of sound proof, writing on the wall, a glimpse of my actual, personal story line so that my heart may be at peace.

God, give me an influx of Faith in these moments as I remember that you see the big picture. He has the ultimate view of the complete and finished story, He can see the beauty that is being created all around the yuck and though He never promised it would be easy, He did promise us a Savior. That Savior gave us His Spirit to dwell within us thus proving that He really will never leave you or forsake you just as scripture says and will be faithful to complete the work began in you and that all of this will work out for Good and that you have nothing to fear.

Far better than even the most well intentioned promises I make my baby boys and the most genuine love I attempt to heap upon them, is the comfort of a Heavenly Father who knows no end and the promises He has made that can never be broken. It was these promises, this covenant, and the fulfillment there of that brought Hope into the world. Friend, I know you have questions in your head. I know you have something tugging at your heart. I know you have that feeling in your gut that only comes from the unknown, even if it's as small as if your son will make an All-Star team or as big as if your loved one will be healed from cancer invading their body. I pray that today, in this moment, as we sit in wait and wonder of what will be, sit and question what will come, let us also sit and rest in the promise that holds us no matter what comes of all those other questions we ask. May we always choose Faith in His promise, regardless of the proof the world tells us we must find.

Pray for me.

for when we want proof