Wrestling with faith

This is an excerpt from a recent keynote at a Mo-Ranch youth conference:

In J.M. Barrie’s book, Peter Pan, every time a child says that he or she does not believe in fairies, a fairy drops dead.  And then there was that wonderful bit in Peter Pan—perhaps it was just in the movie and not the book—where the children jump up and down and clap, and say “I do believe in fairies, I do! I do!” And then the fairies do not die, but they become strong and they fly!

This is how things are supposed work, right? Imaginary things depend on our imaginations. We learned how this worked in Elf. (Spoiler alert: I’m going to tell you how a movie from 10 years ago ended.) Santa could not fly over the cynical city of New York. It crashed in Central Park. It wasn’t until everyone stood around the sled and believed before the faith of the people made Santa’s sled fly. And Christmas was saved!