Doubt sees the difficulties life has brought us to: faith sees the difficulties God has brought us through.

When we are faced with difficulties, especially difficulties that seem overwhelming and unmanageable, what we focus on will determine our capacity and our destiny. Our capacity to encounter that difficulty, and our destiny in terms of where we will reach after going through that difficulty.

Doubt is driven by a mundane vision that reduces reality to the material and the circumstantial. When we are driven by doubt, we see only the size of the difficulty facing us and the set of situations that have brought us to that difficulty—how those situations were caused by our mistakes, someone else’s mistakes, or just by the messiness and misfortunes that seem to beset our life.

In contrast to such a doubting vision, a more faithful vision sees the bigger picture. It sees how beyond the material reality, there is a higher spiritual reality, and beyond the circumstantial is the transcendental. When we see with the eyes of faith, we look beyond the present difficulties to the many past difficulties, which may have been similar or even worse, that God has brought us through.

We see how things did work out, often in ways that we couldn’t have anticipated or even imagined. Beyond life working, is the way God is working through life. It is the working of God, which we can’t see if we get too worked up about how life is working.

That’s why the Bhagavad Gita (3.39) reminds us that it is through faith that we get knowledge. It is when we see with the eyes of faith that we realize that, just as God brought us through many past difficulties in ways beyond our comprehension and maybe even beyond our conception, so too will that Almighty Lord get us through our present difficulties.

 Faith thus broadens and elevates our vision so that we see beyond the material to the spiritual, to know that God is working even when we don’t understand how things are working.

By shifting our focus from what we are going through to the very difficulties that God has brought us through in the past, we can gain confidence that God will get us through our present difficulties.

Summary:

  • Faith broadens our vision, allowing us to see past difficulties as stepping stones through which God has guided us.
  • By shifting focus from our current troubles to how God has helped us before, we gain confidence.
  • With a faithful vision, we can trust in God’s plan, even when we don’t see how things are working out.

Think it over:

  • Analyze any situation that overwhelmed you, noting how such overwhelming occurs when vision shrinks to the material and circumstantial.
  • Recollect a past incident where you faced a huge difficulty and got through it in a way you couldn’t have thought of; appreciate how God worked through that difficulty.
  • Regarding your present difficulty, list three things you can do or three thoughts you can cultivate to expand your vision and see God working in your life.

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04.39 A faithful man who is dedicated to transcendental knowledge and who subdues his senses is eligible to achieve such knowledge, and having achieved it he quickly attains the supreme spiritual peace.