There’s a quote I came across that’s been sitting with me for a while. It’s about Auschwitz and it’s not the history, but the survivors. It said that more people came out of that place with a deepened faith than those who gave it up. That hit me.
To paraphrase La Rochefoucauld: “A small fire is extinguished by the storm, but a large fire is enhanced by it.” Applied to faith …weak faith can’t survive the storm but strong faith? It grows stronger because of it.
And that got me thinking: when life gets brutal, when everything falls apart, when the prayers go unanswered, how often do we question the existence of God? Or doubt the importance of faith? But maybe those aren’t the right questions. Maybe the better one is this:
How deep is my faith, really?
It’s easy to trust when things are going well. But when the storm hits…loss, betrayal, grief, silence, what happens then? Faith that’s only built on comfort was never faith to begin with. It was just comfort wearing a spiritual disguise.
Think again about those survivors of horrific Auschwitz. Their belief in God didn’t grow stronger because they had answers. They didn’t explain away their suffering with neat theology. Most of them probably had no answers at all. But something in them refused to let go. That’s not blind faith. That’s tested faith. That’s faith forged in fire.
So maybe when your own storm comes, when it feels like everything good is being stripped away, it’s not proof that God is gone. Maybe it’s an invitation to go deeper. To stop asking, “Where is God?” and start asking, “Where am I in my faith?”
The storm doesn’t mean your faith has failed. It might mean it’s being revealed or tested
Faith isn’t proven in the calm. It’s proven in the chaos.
So if you’re in the middle of something right now, and you’re questioning everything, you’re not alone. But don’t be too quick to let go of faith. Maybe, just maybe, the storm isn’t trying to take it from you. Maybe it’s trying to grow it.
Inch by Inch