The Apostles’ Creed

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth….” What shall we eat for lunch? Oh, better not forget my purse. What’s the number of the next hymn?

We recite the Apostles’ Creed toward the end of worship on a regular basis. And since the words are burned into our memories, it’s tempting to just begin gathering your stuff and thinking about what’s coming up next instead of concentrating on the words themselves.

But the words themselves are important—like our faith in a nutshell. So I’d like to spend a little time reflecting on them over the next few weeks.

“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” These first two lines are pretty basic to our faith. First, we believe. We have been given the gift of faith, to make the choice in trusting one God, and leaving the others behind. We don’t believe in some higher being, but the Higher Being, the one who created the world out of a formless void, the one some call our heavenly Father.

On the surface, this begining is like a basic fact—not much reflection involved, but underneath, there’s so much more. Like believing itself—what does it entail? How do we arrive at it? Why “Father”? And of course the whole creating idea?

Oooh, it’s tempting to try to answer some of these questions for you, but it’s Lent after all—a time of reflecting, for our faith is often as much about questions as it is about answers.

That’s why we call it “faith” and not “fact.”