Faith and the X-wing Fighter: Warning it gets a little geeky

I'm a nerd. I like Lord of the Rings, I’m way too excited about Harry Potter 7 part 2, and I sometimes make Star Wars analogies (this is one of those).

In The Empire Strikes Back—quite possibly the best movie of the series—Luke goes to Degoba to train as a Jedi with Yoda. When landing on the planet he crashes his X-wing Fighter into a small lake on the swampy planet. During one afternoon of training with Yoda the X-wing, which had been stuck partially submerged in the swamp, sinks completely. Luke had just been moving around rocks by using the Force, so Yoda encourages him to use the Force to raise the X-wing. Luke says, “Master, moving around rocks is one thing, but this is totally different.” Yoda quickly replies, “No. No different. The difference is in your mind.” Luke then makes an unsuccessful attempt to lift the ship by the Force, but gives up calling the task impossible. Yoda, however, immediately proceeds to lift the ship and bring it over to dry ground. After passing around the ship in astonishment Luke says with mixture of wonder and relief, “I don’t believe it.” To this Yoda immediately responds, “That is why you fail.”

I was thinking about this in connection to faith, particularly having faith in God to raise all of our financial support for France, and I think there are a lot of similarities. I look at the external difficulty of the task and decide whether or not I think it can be done—raising a few hundred dollars, no problem…raising thousands, um… But that’s because in reality I’m really trusting in myself. If God didn’t come through for raising a few hundred dollars, I could probably pick up the slack. But there is no way I in my own power have the ability to raise thousands of dollars a month in financial support. It can’t be done. But if I was really trusting in God in both instances, then size has nothing to do with it. God spoke the universe into existence, and it all belongs to Him. So, whether it is two dollars or two hundred thousand, the amount doesn’t really matter, because God is capable of it all. It isn’t a question of ‘can He’ but ‘will He’. My job is to trust that He will, knowing that He is fully capable and believing that He will make it happen. Jesus said if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains. My mind tells me its too big, but scripture says, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”