Will He find Faith?

I was talking the other day to a friend of mine who is middle-aged and single, about what it is like to get married after 40. She asked me if I understood why it is that women who have been married before--widows and divorced women--seem to have an easier time getting remarried than never-marrieds have. I was surprised. I do get it, after years of wondering the same thing.

There is such a thing as living in hope and expectation that you will marry. A lot of formerly married women seem to realize that being married isn't rocket science, and if they did it once, they are capable of doing it again, especially if their marriage is a happy one. Research bears this out in the case of widows and widowers. Those who had happy marriages will often remarry within one year. It is amazing--they come up with suitable partners out of thin air. Always single women on the other hand, despair that there is anyone who is vaguely suitable within a 1,000 mile radius. I know. This was my outlook for many years.

I think that when you are single, you have hopes that you will find someone but you don't always have the expectation that you will. After dating wonderful men who just didn't fit well with you, or giving a trial run to those who shouldn't be given a chance, it is easy to fall into an attitude of resignation. "I'm single and I'd like to marry but given what has happened, it isn't as likely as I'd like to think. So I will move ahead and do my thing. If someone comes along, that is fine. If not, at least I will like myself and have a good life."
Again, I say this based on what I experienced, not necessarily on a global generalization of all single women.

So that fine line between resignation and hope, between giving up and having faith--it is here that God points when He spoke of coming to earth the second time. People will be absorbed in all sorts of pursuits: marriage, owning property, amassing wealth. The love of many will run cold. People will have a form of godliness but will be without true spiritual power. And then Jesus asks the question: "But when the Son of man comes, will He find faith in the earth?"
Or will it be resignation? Resignation that society has gone to hell in a handbasket; that Jesus won't come until He is good and ready; that no matter how much we try to hasten His coming, He still delays. That in this world we will have trouble, and boy howdy, have we ever got it now! Will He find faith on the earth?

Will there be expectation that even though we don't know the whole story about what is going on, He is still in control of the universe? That even if everything in our lives have gone bad, that what He will soon give us--even if it is only after we see death here--will be better than our wildest dreams? That we will one day understand the bigger picture? That the petty annoyances with which we struggle are the stuff that helps us refine our characters so that we will learn to focus on God's sustaining grace instead of our own puny resources?
Will there be faith? Or something else?

This is a question that I have been asking myself often during my morning time with God. It is easy to resign myself to the way things are. It is easy to resign myself as a hopeless sinner to take the path of least resistance in my daily choices. Much more difficult to reach forward by the hand of faith to recognize that I am the apple of God's eye, even as the challenges knock me sideways. I feel determined, by God's grace, to have faith--even if it is as small as a mustard seed. That's all that it takes.