Learning to Trust

 

The Bible in a Year podcast today was in the book of Exodus.  As Fr. Mike comments today, one of the things God is trying to teach the Jewish people here is to trust Him.  It was a lack of trust in God that got mankind tossed from the Garden of Eden.  Today’s reading (Ex 16) has God providing manna in the desert for them to eat.  He tells them to gather enough manna each morning for that day’s food, but no more.  Of course, some DO gather more, and it gets all wormy the next day.  Then God tells them to gather two days of manna on the sixth day, because they were not to work on the seventh day, the Sabbath, and so He would not provide any manna that day.  They did pick the two days of manna, and now it did not rot on the second day.  From a logic/science point of view, how can this manna last only one day on five days of the week, but last two days on the sixth day?  Well, God makes the manna, and the Jews learn (eventually) that they can trust He will make it as He said.

The Jews at this point are just beginning to know the power of God.  Only a few days before, He had parted the Red Sea for them to cross.  Soon, He will give them the land He promised.  And along the way God begins to teach them how to live, as He punishes the worship of idols as they learned in Egypt. And when He promises the Jews that a Messiah will come, they have finally reached the point where they can trust and they do expect that it will happen.  And they wait, with longing.  Unfortunately, when the Messiah does come, many don’t trust Him, in part because they didn’t expect the Messiah to BE God, but also because they didn’t know that the Messiah came not only to save them, but also to teach them further.  And they needed to trust what the Messiah taught. And all of these lessons are to get humankind back to where it once was in relationship to God, before the fall from the Garden of Eden.

There are many examples in the Old Testament of the Jews losing their trust in God when things didn’t go as they wanted.  In effect saying: “Yeh, He parted the Red Sea, but can He …”  Today, it seems that many in the world are saying the same thing.  “Yeh, maybe Jesus did work miracles and somehow people believed He rose from the dead, but …” 

And beyond that “but” is whatever someone thinks things should be.  However, in modern times there never is just a some “one”, because anyone can find supporters on the internet for anything they might say.  And the Christian supporters of what Jesus said and taught seem to quickly forget, and even they too begin to lose their trust.

God had to teach the Jews how and why to trust Him.  Jesus, the Messiah, had to teach the Jews to further trust in Him --- and to live in trust of Him --- and specifically His commandments on how to live.  He summarized the ten commandments He gave Moses in the book of Exodus to two:  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  That is how we humans are to live.  As human life was begun in the Garden of Eden; we were made to live that way, in trust of God. And we don’t need to try and build that Garden of Eden by striving to get what we want.  He will put us back into that relationship with God.  He told us so.  We need to build our trust again.  And our foundation of that trust is in Jesus Christ. He loved the Father, and He loved His neighbor.

Some people like to imagine what heaven might be like.  They are wrong.  Whatever they may imagine, they are wrong.  Heaven is not as we want it.  We will exist in it even as a baby is born in this world, not a world of its own choice.  But like the parents created the baby and want to make it happy, God created us and desires to make us happier, happier in His kingdom than we could ever imagine. 

We need to trust.  We need to live as Jesus taught us, even if for a time, we may not be totally happy, especially with some of the people we are called to love.  The Jews weren’t always happy either, but they had to trust.  Instead of wandering the internet, read the Bible, and learn to trust all Jesus promised there.