Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Hebrews 11.1

Welcome to this daily encouragement from our daily bread.

Believing more than we see was written and read by Wyn Collier.

Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 to 4.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for, and assurance about what we do not see.

This is what the ancients were commended for.

By faith, we understand that the universe was formed

at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. By faith,

Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith, he was commended as righteous when God spoke well of his offerings.

And by faith Abel still speaks even though he is dead.

Believing more than we see.

In the late 19th century, few people had access to the great Sequoia groves in the United States,

and many didn't believe the reports of the massive trees. In 1892, however, four lumberjacks

ventured into the big stump forest in California and spent 13 days failing the grand tree named Mark Twain.

Twain was 1,341 years old, 300 feet tall, and 50 feet in circumference.

One observer described Twain as a tree of magnificent proportions, one of the most perfect trees in the grove.

They shipped part of this remarkable beauty, now destroyed, to the American Museum of Natural

History, where everyone could see a sequoia.

The reality, though, is we can't prove every truth with our eyes alone.

Hebrews describes faith as confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Faith isn't irrational or a fit of

fancy because the whole story is grounded in a person, Jesus, who has entered human history.

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