In That I Trust
In whom do you trust?
Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth,*for there is no help in them.When they breathe their last, they return to earth,*and in that day their thoughts perish.Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help!*whose hope is in the LORD their God; - Psalm 146:2-4
I focused on the psalm because the Old and New Testament readings are ones I felt I had talked about in detail before and nothing particularly inspirational hit me when I read them again.
That is the beauty and frustration of meditating on the daily Scripture readings. Sometimes a light bulb goes off and sometimes the silence is deafening.
But what struck me about the excerpt above is that it can be so depressing.
At first glance, it looks like trusting in each other is futile. But you know I can't stop there. I have to explore this concept a bit.
If we can trust in God, as it so clearly points out on my dollar bill, what does that mean?
I would like to think that I can trust God to put some trustworthy people on this planet. Sure, as the psalm points out, people don't last forever. Only God does. So trusting in God for the long haul makes a lot of sense. Stay with Him and you can't go wrong.
But what about me?
Am I trustworthy?
I like to think I am, but who doesn't? So, what is the lesson here?
Surely God doesn't want us to go through life looking at each other suspiciously, wondering when they other guy is going to do us harm, does He?
Why create a world like that?
So, perhaps the psalmist is warning us that we need to remind ourselves that we are prone to selfishness and that can undermine trust.
Am I stretching a bit here?
Maybe, but there is a way to work out the dilemma of living in a world filled with danger and deceit. If we trust God to guide us to others in whom He trusts, then we are getting somewhere.
If we pray for guidance, we will find trustworthy fellow travelers to walk the journey with us.
In that I trust. If not, life would be too depressing.
More to come...