Just how does an abstract discipline like mathematics find itself mixed up with a notion as difficult to pin down as that of faith. What is this thing called faith anyway? As far as I can see, I never saw faith walking around, nor was I ever able to touch it. As much as I might have wanted a heavy dose of faith as a Christmas present some years, I do not ever remember anyone telling me that they just picked me up a nice piece of faith in the local mall and got a great deal on it.

In the Book of Hebrews of the New Testament of the Bible we read in Chapter 11, Verse 1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” This has always been one of my favorite Bible verses I guess because of the profound implications of the statement. Faith has to be one of the greatest gifts with which God could have endowed man. Yet faith—in order to grow strong— is something that needs to be put into practice regularly, just like any other muscle in the body. Use it, or lose it, as the saying goes. Faith strengthens with use while it weakens through desuetude. Faith is simply not like some other tangible thing that you can get your finger around. Consequently, to embrace this elusive yet noble grace, man needs some kind of driver to bring faith to the surface of existence, a precursor, so to speak, which causes faith to bubble into one’s life and permits easy access to such.

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