TRUST

When we love someone we reach a stage where we totally trust them without any fear or doubt. We give a part of ourselves to that person; we share our very soul. And in doing so we become vulnerable and we weaken ourselves, willingly, for the sake of that person and the love we have for them.

Trust is natural. It is part of us as soon as we are born. A child trusts his parents to take care of him and to have his best intentions at heart. A parent will not give a stone to a child seeking bread, or a serpent when he asks for fish.

But there are times in life when our trust in someone is broken, wounded, even dead. And when trust is dead, it is very difficult to win it back and to go back to a situation where you trust that person again as if nothing happened. In the back of your mind, there will always be doubt and fear to become as trusting and as vulnerable as before.

So, if trust is such a delicate and fragile emotion when dealing with other human beings, how difficult is it to trust someone you have never seen?

We say we trust God. He will look after us, and care for us come what may. But how is it possible to trust Someone we believe in through Faith alone and without any proof or evidence whatsoever?

There are times in life when things go wrong, very wrong, and we feel alone, abandoned, and totally helpless as well as vulnerable. How can we possibly trust an unseen God when He has let us down so badly? Or so it seems. How can we continue to trust Him when trust itself in such circumstances seems to be an illogical solution to the problems we face?

It must be a wretched and lonely place to be in when we can no longer even trust the very God Whom we claim to believe in.

But then ... even Jesus reached that stage in life when hanging on the Cross. He believed His Father had abandoned Him.

If Christ, the Son of God, can reach such moments of utter despair, then we are to be forgiven, perhaps, when at times of great difficulty our humanity succumbs to its basic inherent weakness and loses trust in its Creator.

We should take comfort and encouragement from Christ's example on the Cross. He came to earth as a human to experience and share our every emotion, including trust or the lack of it at times of great sorrow and despair.

He overcame His doubts on the Cross through the grace and love of His Father in Heaven.

So should we, when things are really bad in our lives, turn to God and earnestly seek His help in re-building our trust, perhaps weakened but never destroyed.

May I recommend:

"I Am With You" by Father John Woolley. It is a series of one-page words of divine inspirations given to Fr John in prayer. You open the book at any page and it is amazing how often God is speaking to you there and then about the problem you are wrestling with at the time. ISBN 0-950-8840-7-3