“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 (KJV)

For me, the lessons for today resonate with trust in the Divine: David facing Goliath, the psalmist’s refuge, Paul’s “grace of God,” Jesus’ calming the storm for the terrified disciples on the Sea of Galilee. The source of our “trust in God” sometimes seems like the chicken/egg dilemma. Do we first trust because we have experienced God’s trustworthiness, or is trust pure gift/grace, or are those just two ways of expressing the same thing? For sure, our trust grows as we experience God bringing us safely through the storms of life, as did the disciples’.

Some years ago, I participated in a Bible study group studying the book of Job. As we reflected each week on what the passage had to say to us today, we considered such questions as: What would God like for you to remember about it? What struck you as new, different, interesting? What bothered you about it? What was the most personally significant word, phrase, verse? What new insights do you have as a result of your study? What are the behavioral implications of your insights (what do you need to do differently)? What response are you being called to make? When I looked back over my notes at the end of our study, I discovered the response that I was being called to make was “Trust God.” We had 30 lessons, and in 11 of those “Trust God” was the behavioral response being called forth from me.

From long before that time, trusting in God has been the foundation of my relationship with the Divine. As my relationship with God has deepened, so has my trust. Over and over, I have found God to be faithful in all things, both great and small, and I find that the more I trust, the more trustworthy I find God to be. I know that I am called to trust God when I am caught up in the whirlwind of life, to trust God when fear and anxiety rise up within, to trust God as the old creation passes away and the new remains hidden, to trust God when the storms of life threaten to swamp me, to trust God when the legions of pain and despair shackle me—and so are you. As the saying goes, “Trust God’s hand even if we don’t see his plan.” It is my experience that we can trust Everything Belongs, as Richard Rohr points out in his book with that title.