Five Minute Friday: Doubt

Five minute Friday shifts from last week's easy-to-write about "celebrate" to this week's single word prompt of doubt. As usual, Kate Motaung hosts; as always, we write unedited for five minutes.


"Do not doubt; only trust." Mark 5:35

In the world where the new testament scriptures originated, trust and faith was the expected response to the grace and favor someone might give you. We know from the scriptures – especially from the apostle Paul – that the ability to receive and respond to God's grace, to God's favor, the ability to trust, to lead a life of faithful response, witness, and testimony is in itself a gift of grace. Scripture and the Church testify first of God's grace and God's faithfulness–not nearly as much of human faithfulness. So why do so many of us get hyped up with the the excitement of it's all going to be fine, discover themselves actually living and responding with joy and excitement, and a scant few minutes later, become overwhelmed with doubts? Doubt that God or anyone else truly cares; doubt that I'm any good, that the world or the church – or the world of the church –has a place for me. A calling to me.

It seems to be a major aspect of what we sometimes call the human condition: despite grace, finding ourselves again in creaturely brokenness and bondage and doubt, yet at the same time still redeemed by grace to walk in trust. Left to our own devices and everyday druthers, we can see little other than the negative side of situations and other people, the negative inside our own selves. We tend to choose not life but death.

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Seems to me the reformer Martin Luther had something to say about that.

In Mark 5:36 that opened my free write, the Greek in what we commonly translate as "do not doubt," actually is "do not fear, only trust."

This evening I listened to about half the songs in my YT worship play list; it includes Kent Henry's gently rocking "No Condemnation," with text from Romans 8:1:

There is therefore now no condemnation
For those who are in Christ Jesus
For the law of the Spirit of life,
in Christ Jesus, will set you free
From the law of sin and death

BTW, because I've gone through my blog and hopefully deleted all YT links because they come and go so unpredictably, I'm not linking to the song, but it's easy to find.