Faith. To me, faith is believing in things that are not always visible. Today when we look around it’s easy to believe what we see. What we see is hate, arguing and a lack of humanity. When we see these things, we can’t deny the fact that they are there, but we have to ask ourselves about all the good that we can’t see.

Toward the end of July, our state officer team joined our peers from across the nation online for the Virtual State Officer Summit. In four days, we were able to connect with and develop friendships with other state officers from all across the United States. 

On the third day of my small group, we had an especially impactful conversation. We discussed the idea of looking past stereotypes and preconceived notions of those we meet and really getting to know people for who they are. We talked about how the majority of the time we decide to make our judgments of others based on what we don’t have in common rather than everything we do have in common. It is human nature to look at those around us and come up with judgments and assumptions, but we decide what to do with those judgments. Are we going to use them to assume we know all we need to about the other person, or will we disregard them and decide to actually get to know the person? You see, any time we meet someone we perceive as different than ourselves we have that choice. We have the chance to not succumb to our judgments, assumptions or stereotypes and find a way to connect with that person. Imagine if all those arguing in the world found just one thing they have in common. Maybe the picture in front of us would look a little bit different right now.

At some point in your lives, your faith will be shaken — whether that is the faith we have in ourselves, in the good Lord, or in our fellow human beings. What matters is that we don’t just look at what is put in front of us. I was lucky enough to be shown directly in my small group just how many people still believe finding commonalities is more important than finding differences. I was shown that even with all the arguing and disagreements going on today, there are still so many who see that that is not the way to go. They reminded me that no matter how much hate we are shown in the world, there will always be more good. These days we need just that. We need to show people just how much good we have in our world. We need to always find things we have in common with those we meet while paying no mind to the differences. I challenge you to do these things not just throughout the year, but throughout your lives, and to always keep your faith even when it becomes shaken.