The international fellowship has been going through The Alpha Course, a set of videos designed to provide basic instruction and spark discussion about core topics in Christian faith.

Students have evidently found the material inspiring, because they have had endless questions and comments from the somewhat simple to the profoundly difficult.

Some questions are hard to answer. I know that answers exist in various forms and flavors, but I’m not always sure what my answer is.

But that doesn’t bother me.

It can be hard to accept uncertainty about important questions. But given the nature of who we believe God is, it is inevitable that there are answers we won’t find or couldn’t understand even if we found them.

When that happens, what can we do? Well, we must learn to trust in what we don’t know because of the things we do know. I may not know all the answers, but I know who I believe in. Jesus uses the same idea when he healed a paralytic in the face of complaints from a group of religious teachers:

”9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— 11 “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” 12 And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

Which is easier? Where my sight fails — for I cannot see sins forgiven — I must walk by faith. And where I walk by faith, I walk not in my own power but because he who promised is faithful.