Faith has a tendency to travel from person to person. From strong heart to weak souls? Rarely. Though this progression would make sense it doesn't seem to be the way the Gospel moves. I seem to get my best education in matters of faith not in church, theology groups or in scholarly reading but from the inner city children I get paid to teach about faith. It's a wonderful irony that paves the way for humility.

One of my favorite professors in this school of belief is eight-year-old Frankie. This boy with wild brown hair lives a life that's chaotic at best and violent at worst. He roams these dangerous streets into all hours of the night. I've watched him break into his own house through a back window. His mom won't give him a key because she worries that he's not responsible enough, yet he's on his own until she gets home from an exhausting days work at 10 or 11. Frankie has one brother and three older sisters who raise themselves as well, looking for anything or anybody that might catch their interest or bring them in out of the cold. Sometimes Frankie's oldest sister, with a house key around her neck, keeps all the kids at home with her, but last week this 12-year-old was back in the adolescent psychiatric ward (her second time this year) for severe depression and suicidal thinking. Frankie's dad? Serving prison time for beating his mom. Frankie's mom? A woman who does the best she can with the little she has. She's not abandoning her kids but for her it's either work ten-hour shifts while leaving her kids unattended or don't eat. She can't afford daycare or figure out all the logistics to make government programs work for her. She loves her kids in ways many of us should hope and pray we never have to.

So you'd think I'd have a thing or two to teach Frankie. But I don't. He's the one with the faith that can move mountains. I know a lot of answers but faith is born in questions.

Sometimes we pick up Frankie when he's wandering in the neighborhood. After he spends the afternoon with us at church we're faced with the problem of what to do next. Do we just drop him off on the street corner where we picked him up? Recently, I've begun to take him, and whatever siblings happen to be around, home with me. We make dinner and he runs around the house, chasing my dog with a flashlight. Eventually we get a hold of his mom or just keep driving by his house to see if anyone's home. On one night in particular, as I attempted to drop him off at home, the snow was falling down in sheets and the roads had turned into a regular ice rink.

"It's hard to see." Frankie commented as he steamed up my window and wrote his name with his finger. "All the snow in the air makes it hard to see."

I nodded my head. "God is helping us out."

And I hardly believed it. But he did and sat snug in his seatbelt making random small talk and decorating my window. I was barely listening to him as I focused all my concentration on maneuvering the icy roads. We turned onto one of our busiest streets and began to slide across three lanes, barely gaining control before something more solid than my brakes stopped us. I was a little panicked, but I looked over a Frankie and he was calm as could be. He looked up at me and said, "God is with us." That was enough for him.

And that's faith. From the mouth of a kid who has so few tangible reasons to believe that God's in control of world. Frankie believes. He has a confidence in God that has remained secure even in the kind of childhood that would fuel most of our nightmares. And it's not Frankie that's unique, it's his God. His faith is a gift, given by the Father who knows how desperately he needs it.

Faith takes what's intolerable and makes it survivable. It molds what's impossible and creates out of that something attainable. Faith isn't a prayer that guarantees goodness and justice but rather it's an assurance that God will transforms struggles that are the end of our story into a reality that is just the beginning of His story. Faith is that whisper of a reminder in the deepest part of our hearts that calls out to us when evil prevails. It assures us that there is a deeper good brewing in the corners of the universe.

Faith takes the final punctuation, that period or exclamation point that halts our hope, and replaces it with an "and". "I don't understand why my kids don't listen to me." just might become "I don't understand why my kids don't listen to me and I will keep loving them." "I am angry that my dear friend betrayed me." could transform into "I am angry that my dear friend betrayed me and yet amazed at the friends who surround me." "I have cancer." can, in time, become "I have cancer and God is still with me." This is faith, something deeper than answers, comfort or even healing. Though we wish it did, faith doesn't take away the ache but it makes it so that the ache doesn't take away God.

And this is something I learned from Frankie.

* all names and identifying details have been changed to protect anonymity. © Amy Beth Augustin Barlow 2003