Trust

 

I’ve never thought about bank names before.  So many are named XXX Bank and Trust.  The XXX is really the name, the rest is what they want us to do: bank and trust.  We give them huge amounts of money, banking with them, and then we trust. Yes, they all have some Federally-backed insurance --- up to a limited amount.  Any deposits above that are given in trust.  We trust it will be there in an emergency.  It will be there when we retire.  It will be there for our children when we’ve gone.  To these strangers in a building down the street, we trust --- a lot.  So, why do we find it so hard to trust in God?

God is the author of all life, our lives, our children’s lives.  Our past and our future are gifts from Him, whether we fully understand the magnitude of these gifts or not.  As a Father, He watches over us.  As His children, meant to grow in holiness to be like Him, He does sometime let us fall.  Lessons must be learned, sometimes the hard way.  But even as we choose to go our own way, like the Prodigal Son, we can return.  And He waits.  And sometimes, like the Prodigal Son, our return is as a last resort when we don’t know what else to do.  (Why do we get so far away before we return?)  We’re like that lost sheep, wandering away to see if we can find something better than what He offers us.  And then, like Adam and Eve who chose to go their own way, we’re surprised to see we are lost. 

I saw a video the other day showing a sheep farmer calling his sheep, which were out grazing in a field.  At his call, their heads all lifted up and looked his way.  Then they began rushing toward the shepherd.  They came to him because they trusted he would be good to them.  They trusted him, not like with some money in the bank, but with their very lives.  Visually, it was a good lesson, but left unsaid was: how did they come to know him that well? 

So, how do we come to know and trust God?

I believe Jesus came as a turning point in man’s relationship with God, because with a human example we could better understand God, and how a child of His should grow up to become like Him, and we can trust Him.  Looking back over my years, I’ve gradually learned a lot about God.  And I can also recall the many times I seemed lost, but He was there.  In the history of our family, our country, our Church, our world, my studies show that there were many times when things got so bad, they could have ended, when all could have been lost.  And I could see God’s loving hand there, saving us.  That’s the kind of history, really reflected upon and with all that Jesus taught us, that should help build our trust.

A few years back, I felt God telling me, showing me, that while I lived most of my life trying to know Him better, and live as He created me to live, I was entering another stage of my life.  He was beginning to take care of me more --- as He will to the end.  Oh, He’s shown me in so many ways that I’m still here for a reason, only not for the events I was largely in control of in the past.  Where I may have helped hundreds through charities, and even my work at Ford, now it was less.  It was more personal.  Help that one, He nudges me, or I can see another needing help and I feel Him saying: “Well?”  And sometimes I’m just a step in helping them, and I never see the end results.  But I know Him better now; I trust.  Often.

I didn’t say I usually trust, but only often.  I’ve also become more aware of the ones He gives me to help that I fail.  And when He indicates a small step He wishes me to take, I still often want to take charge --- and then screw things up, trying to do everything when I didn’t even know what His total plan is.  So more than ever, I have learned I need to trust Him.  But He still must remind me now and again.

I have been praying The Litany of Trust prayer for a long time.  It’s on a card in my prayer book, but I’m not sure where I found it.  It has no markings.  Then in the past few weeks that exact prayer has come up in 5 separate groups I’ve watched or participated in.  It suddenly seems everywhere to me. 

And as I write these words in the chapel, I prayed The Chaplet of Divine Mercy, as I do every day, but I saw with new eyes what I was praying.  At the very start of the Chaplet we pray three times: “O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You.”  And at the end of the Chaplet, we repeat again three times “I trust in You.”  The Divine Mercy image of Jesus, as I have on my house entrances, says at the bottom:  I Trust in You.

With all these occurrences of “Trust Me” He’s trying to tell me, and us all, something.  We need to remember, even if it gets hard, He does all things for the Father who loves us.  We need to trust in Him, especially in these dark times.