8b However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

https://biblehub.com/niv/luke/18.8.htm

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;

https://biblehub.com/luke/18-1.htm

Do you believe as you once did?

I have found that being separated from our church community that my faith has become suspended in or by isolation. Sure, we have Sunday meetings by zoom, with our Pastors and several members of the Congregation. Except looking at their young faces makes me feel old and out of things.

Wondering where I belong in the face of bright young faith.

Mine has gone silent. Prayer negligible and Scripture unopened save what lives within. It has become an academic exercise.

Thinking, writing yet belief is suspended. Who now is God that we dwell within a plague?

It is not of God, but of poisoned Nature, a cure somewhere, someday.
They have sung “God is everywhere man…”, is God within the molecules of the plague?
God is omnipresent they say is there anywhere God is not.

Ezekiel.
In the still small voice but not the mighty wind. But again these are the musings of a prophet, a lesson that doesn’t really have meaning for us. We mouth these platitudes and think we know something. But know nothing.

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What is faith that it might disappear before the Son of Man returns

This verse/questioning of Jesus has always puzzled me. The immediate context:-

The Parable of the Persistent Widow

18 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. ² He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. ³ And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

⁴ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷ And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? ⁸ I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18&version=NIV

Faith is Prayer

“Just what will it be”, I said to me, “that will cause all to lose their Faith?” And of course the answer is in the very first verse in Luke 18 –LACK OF PRAYER

Prayer – my / our faith depends on the very thing to which I precariously cling

Our very lives in Christ depend upon our prayer life with him, and once this disappears forever then there will be no faith on Earth. In these different, precarious times we either turn to prayer in thanks or fear, or else we are too flummoxed in our isolation to pray at all. I would never have made a Desert Father.

1 Peter 1:7 Living Bible (TLB)

⁷ These trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests gold and purifies it—and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold; so if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of his return.

I thought test tubes very apt therefore I used this Living Bible Translation.

Well what ever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger my dear departed grandmother was wont to say

God is everywhere but He is most manifest in man. So serve man as God. That is as good as worshipping God.— Ramakrishna