Culture

Faith is the first of the three theological virtues (faith, hope, and love), and its great Old Testament model is Abraham, called by Scripture 'the father of faith.' Faith is more than believing facts about God; it is a virtue by which we believe God and entrust ourselves entirely to him, holding as true everything he has revealed because he is Truth itself. Abraham shows what this looks like in action: God told him to leave his home for an unknown land, and 'he went out, not knowing where he was to go' (Hebrews 11:8). God promised him a son in his old age, and Abraham believed against all odds; 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness' (Genesis 15:6). Faith's opposite vices come in two forms: unbelief (refusing to trust God) and its twin, despair or doubt that hardens into a refusal to hope. Faith is a gift from God, but it is also something we exercise and strengthen, like a muscle. It is the virtue that makes the entire story of Israel possible — a people who keep trusting an unseen God across centuries of trial.

In 1492 a Genoese sailor named Christopher Columbus, funded by Spain, sailed west hoping to reach Asia and instead reached islands of the Caribbean. He never realized he had encountered a continent unknown to Europe, but his voyages opened a permanent and world-changing link between the hemispheres. Other nations soon sent explorers to North America: John Cabot sailed for England (1497) and reached the rich fishing grounds off Newfoundland; Giovanni da Verrazzano and Jacques Cartier explored the Atlantic coast and the St. Lawrence River for France; and Henry Hudson, sailing for the Dutch (1609), explored the river that now bears his name. Why did Europe come? For gold and trade, for a shorter route to Asia, for new land, and to spread the Christian faith.

The lasting result was the Columbian Exchange: the enormous transfer of plants, animals, people, and germs between the Old World and the New. From the Americas came corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and chocolate, which transformed diets worldwide; from Europe came wheat, sugar, cattle, pigs, and especially horses, which would reshape life on the Great Plains. But the Exchange also carried catastrophe. Native peoples had no immunity to Old World diseases like smallpox and measles. Epidemics swept through communities that had never met a European, killing—by many estimates—the majority of the population. It was one of the deadliest disasters in human history, and we should remember it honestly.

Key facts: - 1492: Columbus reaches the Caribbean, sailing for Spain - John Cabot (England, 1497); Verrazzano and Cartier (France); Henry Hudson (Dutch, 1609) - Columbian Exchange: the transfer of crops, animals, people, and disease across the Atlantic - To the Old World: corn, potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate - To the New World: wheat, sugar, cattle, pigs, horses - Old World diseases (smallpox, measles) killed a majority of Native peoples

The Hebrews left us almost no monumental art — and that was a choice. The Second Commandment forbade making 'graven images' to worship, so Israelite art focused on the beauty of the Temple itself, on craftsmanship and ornament, rather than on statues of God, who cannot be depicted. We have no surviving image of Solomon's Temple, so we rely on careful biblical descriptions and scholarly reconstructions: a rectangular stone-and-cedar building entered through two great bronze pillars (named Jachin and Boaz), leading inward through the holy place to the gold-lined Holy of Holies that housed the Ark. Its restraint and symbolism contrast sharply with the art of Israel's powerful neighbors. The Assyrians, who conquered the northern kingdom, lined their palace walls with vast carved stone reliefs — scenes of the king hunting lions, besieging cities, and crushing enemies, all designed to overwhelm visitors with the king's terrifying power. These reliefs (many now in the British Museum) are masterpieces of detail and movement, but they are also propaganda in stone: art in the service of domination. Set Solomon's hidden, sacred Holy of Holies beside the Assyrian king's public boasts of conquest, and you see two opposite visions of what art and power are for — one pointing reverently to the unseen God, the other glorifying a very visible king.

Today's thread: faith (Abraham's trust) built a people, and that people built not boastful monuments to a king but a temple to the unseen God — a striking contrast with the Assyrians' propaganda in stone.