In addition to October 31st being Halloween, it is also what many people call "Reformation Day."  Five hundred years ago, on the door of a church in Wittenburg, Germany, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses describing what he believed to be serious problems with the way the Catholic church (the only Christian tradition of the time) conducted its affairs.

     Undergirding these theses was Luther's conclusion that indulgences, rites of penance, sermons, and church attendance aside, what is most important about people and God is that people find God through faith.  In this material world, we cannot see God visibly.  Yes, Jesus came, died, and rose again, but he's no longer openly present on the planet.  If we wish to know God, we must therefore believe that, on the basis of the historical veracity of the Bible and the rumblings of our inner heart, he is there.
     

    If people wish to know God, they must set aside what they see for what they cannot, and trust, simply trust, that God is there.

    And that he longs to love and communicate with human beings.
     

    If, and this is a big "if," they wish for him to.

    

    Luther's crucial insight was that despite everything people think they need to do, be it rituals, church attendance, asceticism, and the like, to find God, they really only need to do one thing:  believe.
    

    Yet sometimes that's the hardest thing.