Faith in Doubt

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

Fyodor Dostoevsky 

I've had this quote on my wall for years.  Sometimes I doubt the existence of God.  Mostly I don't.  Sometimes I doubt that God loves me.  Mostly I don't.  Sometimes I doubt that God turns bad into good.  But then I'm proven wrong.  

This morning I read Faith in Honest Doubt by Alfred Tennyson and he says it so much better than I.  

You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.

I know not: one indeed I knew
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touch'd a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.

He fought his doubts and gather'd strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length

To find a stronger faith his own;
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,

But in the darkness and the cloud,
As over Sinai's peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Altho' the trumpet blew so loud.

Some people think one should never doubt God. They are correct of course.  But I think it is human, so very human, to doubt the existence of God.  Yes, doubt displeases God, but He loves when we come back, as I always do.