“Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

Desperate father. Exasperated Jesus. Chastised disciples. Anxious crowd. These are the characters present in this miracle story found in the 9th chapter of Mark.

The opening of the chapter describes the Transfiguration. It is a moment of high drama and should be one of spiritual transformation. The three disciples who accompanied Jesus saw not only his glory, but Moses, the great lawgiver, and Elijah the great prophet, the one believed to be the precursor to the Messiah. If that were not enough, they heard the divine voice from the cloud affirming Jesus’ unique status as “my Son, the Beloved.”

WoW! It is hard to imagine a more inspiring experience. This is the type of spiritual “mountain top” event that defines many people’s spiritual existence. Sadly, the disciples fail to live into the significance of this moment, as by the end of the narrative they are debating which of them is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Really?

However…mountain top experiences don’t last. We must come down from the mountain to face the realities of everyday life. When Jesus came down from the mountain, he was immediately confronted with a father desperate for the healing of his son, the failure of his own disciples to effect a cure, and the press of the crowd.

There is disappointment and deep frustration on the part of Jesus when he declares, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?” Let’s not sugarcoat it. Jesus is frustrated, disappointed, and even angry.

His next conversation is with a deeply frustrated and scared father. Jesus acts as a good diagnostician when he questions the nature of the illness and the time in which the child has suffered. The father’s heart-felt plea, “if you are able to do anything” evokes Jesus’ response, “If you are able! -All things can be done for the one who believes.”

It is the father’s response which resonates most deeply with my own experiences. “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Emphasis added)

I have spent most of my life talking to people about faith, trying to encourage and support when faith grows dim in the reality of illness, death, rebellious children, failed marriages. But it is with the dad in this narrative that I most closely identify. I struggle to have faith when God is silent when my prayers go unanswered, and discouragement overwhelms.

When people question, “Pastor why?” And I don’t have an answer. When I cannot even answer my own questions about God’s silence or seeming indifference. The crowd that surrounded Jesus were there only as curiosity seekers. The father was there out of desperation. He had enough faith to seek out Jesus but realized the inadequacy of his faith.

That’s me. I can talk about faith, preach about it, but I struggle to live it. I imagine God is often frustrated with me. I fail more often than I succeed. The fact that I do not always have faith to move mountains does not make me a failure. Nor you. Like the dad in the story, we understand that our faith is often tested and challenged. If it were easy and obvious it would not be faith.

The writer to the Hebrews put it best in defining faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). In that definition I find myself struggling each day to believe in what I cannot see and live into a hope that seems elusive.

I am the dad who humbly declares, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

The amount of faith proclaimed by the father is sufficient for the healing of his son. One can only imagine the witness of the father going forward as he tells the story of healing. The faith that was inadequate grows into the faith that moves mountains of unbelief and disappointment.