As I lay in my tent one night during my recent backpacking trip, listening, with more than a little trepidation, to the enormous thunderstorm raging outside, hoping I had staked down my tent sufficiently, hoping that the water pounding down would flow outside and not inside my shelter, waiting for the morning, I had much time to ponder the essence of faith.  Yes, I prayed for protection, and yes, I prayed for an end to the storm (spectacular though it was, with thunder rocking and lightning flashing, its intensity was a bit unnerving), but most of all I prayed that I might see a new face of the divine, a new dimension of what it means to believe in and know God.
     Those of us who believe in God usually cannot help but pray to him in times of challenge and distress (although given that these prayers come out of our understanding that we are in a relationship with him, we ought to be praying to him at all times, distress or not).  After all, we're only human.  Yet believing in God goes deeper than simply acknowledging relationship with him.  Believing in God means that we embrace and accept, however grudgingly, the vicissitudes of existence not because we necessarily enjoy them, but because we believe that they are occurring in a world that is neither random nor without purpose.  Believing in God means believing that purpose pervades the cosmos, purpose, which I hasten to add, is not always something we can fathom, comprehend, categorize, or grasp, yet purpose which we believe is always good, again, not necessarily good in the way that we might define good in this life, but purpose grounded in an absolutely good God.  We will not always understand it.
     Did I wonder about the goodness of God in the midst of this storm?  I certainly did.  Although the storm was remarkable for its power, it was also frightening:  what would happen as the night progressed?  Yet I always reminded myself that the reason I continued to believe in the goodness of God was that, in spite of everything I could, and could not, see, to do otherwise was to live in a totally meaningless world, a world devoid of value, purpose, or point, a world that, in the words of many an unbeliever, "just is"--and we "just are."
     Yet we all know that we are more than beings who "just are"; indeed, whenever we wonder about ourselves, in a big or small way, we implicitly accept that we are more than that.  Belief will not ameliorate all problems, as every believer knows, but belief gives us  purpose.  As the psalmist encourages, "Relax, and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10).
     Within a few hours, the rain had stopped, and I was able to get up, eat breakfast, take down my tent, and continue on my way.  And purpose reigned.