The Path of Faith

Part 1 in the Series, The Paths of Righteousness

There are passages of Scripture we memorize early in life, often without realizing how deep they go. Psalm 23 is one of them. It is spoken at funerals, whispered in hospital rooms, and quoted in times of fear. You know how it goes, even if you are not someone who memorizes scriptures.

We often quote the Psalm to provide comfort. It is profoundly poetic.

But, Psalm 23 is far more. It is structured as a map. It is a treasure map for the soul’s journey into divine life.

As a map, it provides both landmarks and guidance. Each verse marks a turning point in the spiritual life, what David calls the “paths of righteousness.”

These are not moral checklists that define what rules we have to follow. Instead, they are movements of grace. They are the ways the Spirit leads us into maturity and union. Each verse is an invitation.

The first step is the path of faith, learning to trust the Shepherd. In this first part of the series, we explore the idea of faith as it is presented in verse one:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

(Psalm 23:1)

Before we can be led beside still waters, before we can walk without fear through the valley, we must first learn to believe that God is real, that He is good, and that His call to us is personal.

Awakening to the Shepherd’s Presence

Faith begins with awakening - not to emotion or imagination, but to reality itself.

It is the recognition that God is the Creator. That the world around us, in all its symmetry and beauty, bears the imprint of His design. The mountains, the rivers, the intricate order of a cell, and the quiet strength of human love - none of these are accidents of chance. They are reflections of divine intention.

When David declared, “The Lord is my shepherd,” he was not reaching for poetic metaphor. He was naming a truth about existence: that there is a mind and a will at the heart of creation - a personal presence guiding and sustaining all things.

This kind of awakening does not require mystical vision or secret revelation. It is the rational conclusion of honest observation. Look closely enough at the structure of life - its balance, its moral order, its persistent longing for meaning - and the presence of the Shepherd begins to emerge as the only explanation that satisfies both intellect and heart.

Faith, then, begins not with confusion but with clarity. It is not the suspension of reason but its fulfillment. As the psalmist writes,

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” (Psalm 19:1)

Yet in calling the Lord “my Shepherd,” David also makes a profoundly relational claim. The Creator is not a distant force but a caring guide. The One who shaped the cosmos also attends to the soul. To awaken to the Shepherd’s presence is to see that creation is not centered on human comfort or success — it exists for God’s pleasure. And because He delights in what He has made, we are invited to delight in it too.

This is the shift that marks the beginning of faith: moving from seeing the world as random to seeing it as relational. Creation is no longer a closed system of cause and effect, but an expression of divine love - a cosmos alive with response to its Maker’s will.

When we awaken to this truth, our prayers begin to change.

We stop asking, “How can God serve my purposes?” and begin asking, “How can I live in harmony with His?”

That is the first act of faith: to recognize that life is not about my plan, but His pleasure.

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… all things have been created through him and for him.” (Colossians 1:16)

Faith as a Way of Seeing

Once we awaken to the truth that God is the Creator and not we ourselves, faith begins to change how we see. It reshapes the lens through which we interpret the world.

Faith is not simply believing that God exists; it is learning to view everything — success and failure, joy and sorrow, beauty and pain — through the conviction that creation is meaningful because it belongs to Him.

This shift may begin quietly. We notice that the same world that once seemed random now seems ordered. We sense purpose where there once appeared only process. A sunrise no longer feels like coincidence, but like consistency — a reminder of the One who said, “Let there be light.”

Faith reveals that creation is not just beautiful; it is coherent. Its rhythms and boundaries, its balance between freedom and structure, all testify to a divine mind.

Even suffering, while still a mystery, begins to make sense within this framework. It no longer disproves God’s goodness but exposes how fragile our independence was to begin with.

In this way, faith restores sight. It trains us to see both outwardly and inwardly — to interpret life not as a story of chaos, but as a story of covenant. The faithful heart begins to say, “Even when I do not understand, I will trust that there is meaning, because the Shepherd is good.”

The Apostle Paul described this transformation simply:

“We walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

At first, that sounds like a contradiction. But what Paul meant was not blindness — it was a deeper form of vision. Sight sees what is in front of us; faith perceives what lies beneath and beyond.

The mystic Hildegard of Bingen wrote,

“Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.”

To her, faith was not opposed to reason but its completion. The natural world, rightly seen, becomes a revelation — an endless procession of symbols through which the Creator speaks. When our eyes are purified by trust, we begin to see that everything visible participates in the invisible.

Julian of Norwich expressed this same truth in a single, tender image:

“He showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut… I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What may this be? And it was answered thus: It is all that is made. God made it. God loves it. God keeps it.”

To live by faith is to walk through the same world as everyone else, but to see it differently.

• Where others see coincidence, faith sees providence.

• Where others see silence, faith hears a quiet invitation.

• Where others see futility, faith perceives the first traces of redemption.

Faith, in the end, is not the denial of what is visible — it is the recognition that what is visible points beyond itself. It is seeing creation not as an end, but as a signpost, leading back to the Creator.

The Discipline of Trust

Faith begins as recognition, but it matures into trust.

Once we see that God is the Creator and that His design is good, we face the harder question: Will I entrust myself to His care, even when I cannot see where He is leading?

This is where belief becomes discipleship.

David’s psalm opens with assurance — “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” But the power of the line is not in its poetry; it’s in its posture. It is the posture of surrender. To call God “Shepherd” is to admit that I am a sheep — dependent, guided, vulnerable, and loved.

Trust is not passive. It is a spiritual discipline — an act of will, practiced day by day.

It means returning again and again to the same truth: God’s wisdom exceeds mine; His timeline is not my own; His love is better than my understanding.

“You must learn to trust God with the heart rather than the head,” writes The Cloud of Unknowing. “For He can be loved, but He cannot be thought.”

This is the essence of mystical trust. We move from reasoning about God to resting in Him. The intellect has done its work — it has recognized that creation is good and God is real — and now the heart must act on that recognition by surrendering control.

Trust also takes shape in the small, ordinary rhythms of life.

No one understood this better than Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century monk who worked in his monastery’s kitchen. Amid pots and pans, he found the same presence of God that others sought in the chapel.

“The time of business does not differ from the time of prayer,” he wrote, “and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees.”

Brother Lawrence’s simplicity reveals the heart of the discipline: trust transforms every action into communion. We do not wait for quiet or clarity to trust; we practice it wherever we stand.

Like the sheep who follows the shepherd through valleys and shadows, trust is learned by motion. It is built not in theory but in walking — step by step, choice by choice. And over time, as we obey without full understanding, we begin to notice that trust ripens into peace.

Paul describes this peace as something that “surpasses understanding.” (Philippians 4:7)

That phrase might as well be the mystic’s definition of trust: a peace that logic cannot supply, born from the soul’s quiet “yes” to the unseen Shepherd.

In the end, the discipline of trust is not about the absence of fear but the presence of faithfulness.

It is the courage to say, “Even here — in this uncertainty, this valley, this moment I do not understand — I will follow, because I know the One who leads me is good.”

Faith as a Daily Practice

Trust is not a single act—it is a way of living.

Like all disciplines of the Spirit, it grows through practice, through repeated, conscious participation in what is true.

In Psalm 1, the righteous person is described as one who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night.”

That meditation is not a mental exercise alone—it is a continual reorientation of the heart. The psalmist compares it to a tree planted by streams of water, drawing nourishment in every season.

Faith, likewise, is sustained by continual contact with its source.

Each day provides opportunities to practice faith in simple ways:

• Begin with acknowledgment. Before your mind fills with plans or anxieties, take one quiet breath and say: “The Lord is my shepherd.” This simple act reorders the day around truth rather than fear.

• Pause before reaction. When frustration or uncertainty arise, pause long enough to remember that the Shepherd is present. The pause itself becomes prayer.

• Respond with gratitude. Gratitude is trust expressed in motion. It turns awareness into worship and transforms even ordinary moments—washing dishes, driving to work—into communion.

• Rest in uncertainty. Faith matures when we stop demanding control. When answers do not come, practice stillness. Say with the psalmist, “Be still, and know that I am God.”

Brother Lawrence practiced this discipline every time he lifted a pot from the fire. The Desert Fathers practiced it in solitude. Modern mystics practice it in cities, offices, and kitchens.

What unites them is not the setting but the awareness: the conviction that God’s presence is not occasional—it is constant.

To live by faith is to train the soul to remember that constancy. Over time, this practice changes us.

The reflex of worry is replaced by quiet confidence. The instinct to control is replaced by openness.

And even in difficulty, there comes a deep assurance that, as Julian of Norwich wrote,

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

This is the fruit of the first path—the Path of Faith.

It begins with seeing, matures through trust, and becomes life through practice.

It is not the end of the journey, but the door through which all other paths are found.

Walking the Path of Faith

Faith rarely begins with certainty. It begins with awakening — the quiet realization that there is a Shepherd, and that I am not my own guide.

From that first recognition, a new way of seeing unfolds. The world does not change, but how I see it does. The ordinary becomes radiant with meaning. The uncertain becomes sacred ground. Even in confusion or fear, something within whispers, “You are not alone.”

To live by faith is not to escape doubt but to walk through it, trusting that the Shepherd leads even when the path is unclear. Each moment, each breath, can become a prayer of trust — an offering that says, “I choose to follow.” Over time, this posture of trust transforms how we move through the world. We begin to see God not only in holy places but in the smallest corners of our lives: in the sunlight through the window, in the rhythm of our work, in the quiet care of others.

Faith is not an event but a way of being. It is the practice of remembering that the One who leads us is good. When we learn to see through that lens, life itself becomes prayer — and the path before us, whatever it holds, becomes a path of peace.