In 2 Cor. 5:7, Paul writes that we walk by faith, not by sight. According to Paul, that should give us confidence. Do you walk by faith or do you walk by sight? I’d guess most of you walk by sight, don’t you?

You see the path in front of you; it is sight which keeps you from walking off a cliff. And so we go through life like that, relying on our sight. We, in fact, often think that only what we can see and touch are real.

That is what really gives us confidence. But, you know as we grow up, we learn you can’t always rely on your sight to determine what is real.

Descartes had a famous illustration of a stick in a pond stuck down in the mud. Where the stick touched the water it appeared to be bent — that is what his sight told him.

But, when he went to pick it up and pulled it from the water, the stick was straight. And because of that, he concluded you cannot trust your senses.

But as we’ve gone on in our rational scientific world, we try to explain these things where our sight lets us down.

And we now know there is the law of refraction, that light moves at different speeds through different mediums and what Descartes saw was an example of this: Light moves through water at a different rate than through air, and it appeared to him as a different angle, causing the appearance of a bend in the stick.

There seem to be these laws, which we can rely on, scientific laws.

There are others laws like that of aerodynamics, where air takes longer to pass over a larger area.

Air passes over the top of a wing slower than it does on the shorter bottom, causing lift, and so an airplane — something heavier than air — can fly, and we can see that, even though it seems hard to believe.

Paul tells us what we really can believe in, and it is not in sight, but it is in faith. Faith you can rely on, even when it means your life, especially when it means your life.

Paul says if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new! Eyes of faith see what is truly real. We walk by faith, not by sight.

Rev. Dale Brown is the pastor of Cumberland and Guinea Presbyterian Churches. His email address is dalembesq@aol.com.