Faith · fiction
When everything collapses and faith remains
A story about a man who lost almost everything and walks into a simple church to hear stories of ordinary people who came through the impossible.
bairogonzalez.com team, drawing on Bairo's story · Published
A vision — a short story.
He went in because it was raining.
That's what he told himself, at least. He had been walking aimlessly for hours, ever since he left the lawyer's office with the folder under his arm and the certainty that nothing was left. The company wasn't left. The car wasn't left. His brother's respect wasn't left; his brother had lent him money and now didn't answer the phone. What was left was the folder, the rain and a pair of shoes that already let the water in.
The church door was open. Inside, wooden pews, a very clean tile floor, and people. Simple people, in Sunday clothes on a Wednesday night. No one asked who he was. A white-haired man simply moved over a little on the pew, so he would fit.
He sat with the folder on his lap.
There was no long sermon. There were people who stood up, one at a time, and told their stories. A woman told how her son had disappeared for two years and come back. A young man told how he had gone hungry and now worked at a bakery. A man his own age told how he had lost everything, exactly everything, and had slept in a bus station, and how one day someone held out a hand to him without asking anything.
He listened. He didn't believe any of it, or thought he didn't. But he listened.
At one point, the white-haired man beside him closed his eyes, and he, out of imitation or exhaustion, closed his too.
That's when the vision came.
He saw a river. Not a river of water, a river of people, crossing the centuries. Each person carried a different weight on their back. Some carried stones, others carried children, others carried nothing and seemed the most tired. They all crossed the same dark place, a kind of gorge between mountains, where the river grew narrow and violent. He saw that some fell. He saw that others lifted them up. He saw that no one crossed alone, even those who thought they did.
And he saw himself, there, in the middle of the river, with the folder under his arm.
Behind him, someone he didn't know. Ahead, the man who had slept in the bus station. And he understood that faith, in that river, wasn't an idea about God. It was the decision to take the next step without seeing the shore. To trust in something unseen. The shore existed, because others had reached it. He just couldn't see it yet.
He opened his eyes. The service was over. People greeted each other, asked after one another. The white-haired man put a hand on his shoulder and said just one sentence:
"Come back whenever you like."
He left. It was still raining. The folder was still heavy, the debts were still the same size, his brother still didn't answer. Nothing had changed outside.
But he walked home differently. No longer like someone running away. Like someone crossing.
At home, he sent his brother a message. He didn't apologize or explain anything. He wrote only: "When you can, I'd like to talk." He lay down and, after weeks of sleepless nights, slept through the night.
Bairo says that, having lost everything, he found in a congregation the stories of ordinary people who had come through the impossible, and that he came to trust in something unseen. Read: The God of the impossible.
The way forward
Faith, for those who believe and for those who don't, can be the decision to take the next step without seeing the shore. Listen to the story of someone who has already crossed: it's proof the shore exists. If the weight turns into despair, in Brazil CVV answers at 188, free, 24 hours; elsewhere, reach out to your local crisis line. Asking for help is also crossing.