The Sun Always Rises
A photo I took of the sunrise behind the Manhattan Bridge.
Being good by just being
We often think the work of faith is about improvement, about getting stronger, wiser, holier. It’s how we’re trained to think in nearly every other area of life. But what if the spiritual life isn’t about becoming more faithful, more prayerful, more good; what if it’s about remembering what it means to simply be?
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once wrote about Adam and Eve’s story in Genesis. He said Adam’s sin wasn’t that he wanted to be bad—it’s that he wanted to know himself as good. Before that moment, Adam didn’t think about goodness. He just lived it. He breathed it, the way a child breathes without awareness. But when Adam reached for the fruit, he stepped outside of that harmony. He wanted to measure what was already true.
From that moment on, we’ve been trying to do what Adam did. We are trying to take hold of goodness, to name it, to control it. Even our prayers echo this impulse. “Increase our faith,” the disciples say to Jesus. It’s such a relatable request. If only I could believe more, trust more, do better. But Jesus answers with a quiet reversal: faith isn’t something to accumulate. It’s something to receive.
Faith doesn’t begin with our effort. It begins with God’s faithfulness. It’s less about what we build and more about what we allow. Like the rising sun, it shows up every day whether or not we’ve earned it, whether or not we even notice.
None of us make the sun rise in the morning. We can’t. And yet it comes. No matter what we do or don’t do, it arrives faithfully every morning and pours its light over the earth. Our role is not to seize the sun’s warmth and rays. Our role is to trust and receive them.
That’s what Jesus means when he speaks of faith the size of a mustard seed. The smallest seed doesn’t strain to grow. It just receives what it’s given: sunlight, water, soil.
So maybe faith isn’t about measuring our growth or our worth. Maybe it’s about turning toward the light and allowing it to illuminate, warm, and bring life.
The sun always rises. Not because of us, but for us.
That might be all the faith we need.
Fr. John Gribowich
