There are those who are said to be “filled with faith,” but I’m not one of them. I’m guessing you’re not either.

In Scripture, Stephen is given this accolade in Acts 6:5, as was Barnabas in Acts 11:24. If anyone else qualified, I can’t find them this morning.

Most of us are mixtures of faith and something else. Like the fellow who admitted to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

For some of us, the blend is faith and unbelief.

For others, it’s faith and ignorance which co-exist and battle for supremacy in our minds and hearts.

Then there’s faith and doubt, which is a tad different from unbelief. Unbelief is negative whereas doubt can be a healthy expression of a reasonable mind that requires just a little more evidence.

Faith and fear appear to be opposites that occupy space in the minds and hearts of some of us at the same time. Jesus said to one group, “Why did you fear? Where is your faith?”

Faith and sight is another set of odd companions. Faith covers what we cannot see but which we believe, while sight has to do with knowledge from what we see and can verify. Astronomer Carl Sagan wrestled with questions of God in his lifetime. Someone asked his wife, “Doesn’t he want to believe?” She answered, “No. Carl wants to know.” (See Romans 8:24.)

Faith and presumption are a twosome forming a bad marriage in some. Faith hears the promises of God and goes forward; presumption goes where the Lord never sent, claims what He never instructed, and expects what He never promised. Pity the preacher who can’t distinguish the two; pity more the people who sit under his ministry.

And then there are some of us, Lord help us, who are a confusing blend of faith mixed with unbelief, ignorance, doubt, fear, sight and presumption.

Sometimes that’s me. I suspect it was my dad.

What’s on my heart this morning is a word of encouragement to others like myself who find that, far from being filled with faith, we are a stew of the good stock of faith but with vegetables, meats, and liquids from many strange fields stirred in.

A casserole of faith.

I stand at the grave of my dad, who left us on Saturday, November 3, 2007, and think of these things.

A wonderful person whom his immediate family adored, Carl McKeever was also a perplexing and complex human with so many divine and earthly qualities mixed in and inextricably laced and twisted and tied, that only the Creator can separate, identify, catalog, and evaluate them.

He was a man of faith who rarely went to church. He would sit by the radio on Sunday afternoons and listen to hours of preaching, but would not go to the trouble of getting dressed and driving three miles to hear God’s man preach. He loved the old gospel songs and hymns and could get teary-eyed listening to one done well, but would not open his mouth to sing a note.

Dad was prejudiced but loved the people of other races whom he knew. He was generous to those in need, but would have shot anyone coming onto his property to steal.

There was a great kindness about the man. Also a harsh temper.

When I was eight years old–at a time when he was hard-working, hard-cussing, and sometimes hard-drinking–he instructed me to get my coat and go with him. We walked the railroad tracks from our Raleigh County, West Virginia, mining camp to the town of Sophia where we entered a variety store. Inside, he bought me a Bible with not one word of explanation for this. Apparently he saw something of God working in my heart even then.

Dad was baptized when a young adult, but followed that testimony with years of laxity about spiritual things and a fondness for drink and a weakness for gambling. After working long and hard in the coal mines during the week, and later combining that with hours in the fields every day, he left Mom to get the six children ready for church on Saturday night and walk us all to Sunday School and church the next morning.

In his later years, he read the Bible a lot and, at my request, marked it up. The verses he marked and the notes he left indicate to me He was a man of faith. He treasured many of the same Scriptures I do, yet we rarely talked about them.

Sometimes when he would come to hear Ronnie (the oldest of Dad and Mom’s six) or me preach, the host pastor of the church, knowing nothing other than what he saw, would invite Dad to pray in the service. Never hesitating for a moment, Dad would offer up a sincere and simple prayer of faith that left the rest of us in tears.

Again and again in his declining years, he assured us all he was saved, that he loved the Lord, and was holding on to the promises of God for the afterlife. His eyes moistened at the prospect of seeing Jesus.

Go figure. Because I can’t.

It’s just one more reason we give thanks that God is the Supreme Judge. Unraveling all the conflicting strains and contradictory testimonies from one person’s life would be akin to untying the Gordian Knot, a task not for mortals. Imagine doing that for billions.

I stand at the grave, across the little paved street in front of New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church, three miles outside Nauvoo, Alabama. And I miss this old gentleman so much. Far more than I ever expected.

Invariably, I weep a little.

Sometimes I talk to him. “Thank you, Pop. I love you with all my heart. And I sure do miss you.”

Yesterday, as I write, as the body of John Wallace Mason lay in state in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Madison, Alabama, prior to the funeral service, family members and friends filed by. Some were seen dropping items inside the casket.

A son-in-law smiled. “John was such a golfer. He taught all his grandchildren to play. We thought it would be a fitting touch for each person to write something on a golfball and drop it into the casket.”

John Mason was the kind of strong, gracious, and faithful deacon any pastor would love to have. I took a ball and penned a note about my love for him and signed it.

When my dad died, several of the grandsons dropped decks of cards into his casket. (One bought 13 decks and made up a set composed of 52 aces, and dropped that in.) My mom wasn’t so sure about the rightness of all that, but we assured her that since playing rummy with family members was such a precious thing for him to do–Dad taught two generations of us that little game–it was actually a sweet thing to do.

Fellowship around the table with our dad playing rummy occupied hours and hours of our lives through the decades, and is one of the sweetest memories his children and grandchildren have of him.

The man left a larger-than-life whole in our hearts when he left. The fact that he was working on birthday number 96 when he departed does not lessen the pain one iota. We would have kept him here forever had it been left to us.

“Lord,” I say, “we’re really counting on the promises of the Lord Jesus.”

“Jesus said, ‘Because I live, you too shall live.’ And ‘Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.'”

“And Your word tells us ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.'”

“Father, if it turns out this was all in vain, that the atheists were right, I’m going to be so angry with you.”

My eyes tear up. And I say, “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even your faith.”

“Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Oh, I do believe, my Lord.

Help my unbelief. And my fears, my doubts, my ignorance, my stupidity….

Amen.

(Today, April 13, would have been my dad’s 98th birthday. I noticed this week in the hallway in the house he built in 1954, the 2007 calendar still hangs, with Saturday, November 3, circled. Life changed for us that day.)