Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
No one’s faith journey is the same. I’ve known people who were raised in the Christian faith of their parents, who found comfort and joy and succor in it, who never really questioned the concept of church, capital or lower case c, for whom obedience and submission come naturally. Their stories are a 
beautiful witness to faith. They appear the same on the surface, but talk a bit and you’ll find that beneath the surface are unique struggles and challenges they truly don’t regard as such; the impact of what others regard as tragedies don’t penetrate the souls of these folks because their spiritual armor is so strong.
Then there are the rest of us. Our journeys all are different as well. They include doubts and fears that rocked us to the core. Sometimes, the rocking and reeling was enough to drive us from the Lord for a time. Sometimes, we didn’t have much of a faith life as children, and when struggle reared its head, we had no God to turn to… only a dim understanding that we needed something that we didn’t have, that treasured family members and friends and work and prestige and money couldn’t buy or offer.
Today we celebrate the feast of Saints Philip and James, two apostles whose stories we know little about. This James, we believe may have been the apostle James, son of Alphaeus; he is not to be confused with James the son of Zebedee and brother of John. Similarly, little is known about Philip, beyond that like Andrew and Peter he came from Bethsaida and was present at the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the Last Supper. We see him there in today’s Gospel reading; we hear the frustration in Jesus’s explanation of his relationship to the Father. We know that like Paul, both suffered martyrs’ death.
And perhaps that’s the lesson to be learned from Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians 15. We come to the Lord in different ways, “born abnormally” as Paul was, or longtime faithful servants of the Father. How or when we get there isn’t as important as that once we arrive, we are steadfast in our service and belief.
