Better late than never, I guess:  computer problems this morning:

     Do we live with reason, or do we live with faith?  In truth, we use both.  We use our reason to make choices and decisions, and we use our faith to move forward when we  do not have all the physical evidence that we should do so.  We need reason to live intelligently, yet we need faith to live aware of the limits of reason.
     But do we need reason to be aware of the limits of faith?  This is the dilemma I face as I recall that roughly thirty-nine years ago today, I came into a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ.  Oh, I tried for years to reason my way away from this moment, sought steadfastly to deny, on the basis of what I could logically grasp, that such a moment was even possible.  Jesus seemed anything but reasonable.
     Reason, however, only carried me so far.  In the end, reason, by making me, or so I thought, aware of the limits of faith, enabled me to see that, in contrast to reason, faith really has no limits.  I could reason my way through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  I could understand them intellectually.  But I could only experience them if I believed they happened, and if I believed they happened for me.
     Although my encounter occurred many years ago in, to borrow a phrase from the Star Wars movies, a galaxy far, far away (see my book Imagining Eternity:  A Journey Toward Meaning), it is ever present in me today.  And it is so because although I believe it with my reason, I ultimately know it with my faith.  Jesus is reasonable, but only because we experience him by faith.