The Choice for Trust

They were deep thoughts—deeper than I was prepared to process at six in the morning. The thought that hit me first regarded the first few chapters of Genesis. We are told there that we are made in God’s image. If that is really so, I thought, why do we treat each other in the ways that we do? Why are we self absorbed? Why are we disinterested in others and only really interested in what serves us? Why are we sad and depressed? Why are we negative in any way? If we are made in God’s image, why don’t we act like God?

Then I realized that maybe this was precisely what God originally intended but as we are wont to do, we failed God and forced him to resort to plan b.

The Genesis chapters turn to the story of “the fall” as it has been termed. Adam and Eve, the so-called first people, take and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is the one tree that God had deemed off limits but curiosity got the best of them. I realized what a great story this was that the Hebrew writers used to illustrate why we aren’t like God. We are gifted with the ability to know things! It is our knowledge that gets in the way. We are able to remember. We remember how people hurt us in the day before and we file those hurts away in our brains. Some of us store them as ammunition and come loaded to our relationships so that when someone crosses the limits of our hurts, we can let them have it. Some of us internalize them and allow the hurts to pile up in negative thoughts that lead us to depressive places. But, God doesn’t remember. He lets us start over every day with a new slate of promises. Why can we not do that for ourselves and for others? Why can we not let every moment and every person just be as they are?

You have heard people say, “You are too smart for your own good,” or “Wow, I outsmarted myself!” I realized on this early morning that I have lived those phrases. All of that knowledge of mine has caused me to think, on more occasions than I’d like to admit, that I somehow know better than God. In so thinking, it has caused me to fail to embrace true trust!

True trust is like the alcoholic who rises from bed daily not knowing if he has it in him to make it through the day but putting the ability to do so in God’s hands. True trust is the addict who can hold on to the memories of how great that last high was and yet also remember and know that life is better and more free when not clouded by a drug. True trust is the sinner that can take the memories of all of the hurts of the past and let them go, knowing with hope that love will somehow pave the way.

The Biblical narrative is filled with stories of those who held to memories and knowledge and ultimately failed to believe contrasted with stories of those who held to memories and hope and ultimately chose to believe. Gideon was given promise after promise and sign after sign but “was too smart for his own good” and never believed until God’s promise came to fulfillment and in the next go round he seemed to forget how God had provided for him.

God wants goodness for us. Yet, we get in the way of that goodness when we forget God’s promises or when we focus on all of the things that have gone wrong in the past and believe that because the thing we hope for hasn’t occurred yet, it never will. Such doubt is not from God. God asks us to have hope and to believe that goodness will come to us no matter what. God asks us to celebrate the knowledge that we have and then have the courage to set it aside so that we don’t outsmart ourselves but simply let God work instead. Isn’t that the wisdom of life—deciding that we want God to be in control and then letting God work? The choice for trust must be the place of peace. I hope for peace and trust for us all. Amen.