I love the sea. It was one of God’s great jokes that this guy who grew up within walking distance of the Pacific Ocean has lived in the mountains for over 15 years. I return to the water every chance I get and just last week I stood on the shore of the Monterey Bay and felt its enormous power to wash me with a deep peace, once again.

Climbing over the rocks, I stopped to look at a small tide pool nestled in a basin scooped out over millions of years. As I watched the little creatures that inhabited that tiny pool, I marveled over the realization that here was a glimpse of what was out there in the vast ocean. A small sampling of a much greater reality.

Such is a healthy faith.

What we have been graced to understand and believe about God is only a tiny glimpse of a much greater truth. A healthy faith knows the limitations of understanding. A healthy faith welcomes other insights, other ways of expressing belief, other ways of understanding God.

The great preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, once wrote,

"All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism."

There is so much we simply do not and cannot know.