Am I even qualified to write about this?

Trust was lost early for me. Need was not erased, but the expectation that my needs would be answered in safe and fulfilling ways was dormant in me for many years.

The advantage of this scenario was that I seldom experienced disappointment.

The disadvantage of this scenario were the gaps in my relations with the Lord and with others. Healthy interface expects the Lord or a person to stay the same over time. I did not have that.

I have heard it said that trust is a choice based on the willingness to risk. I believe at a cognitive level that is true. Trust can be a sterile decision based on available data, counting the cost of possible disappointment before commitment.

I am convinced I was created to know trust at a subcortical level. For me this is a place beyond thought. It is a default that I rest my existence upon. The cost of disappointment is given the power to upend me. But the resulting peace and constancy of this place makes it safe to risk being authentically me, unfiltered, before the Lord and with others to whom the Lord has knit me.

I think Paul knew this trust when he spoke of being content in all things. I think Isaiah knew this trust when he wholeheartedly said (without knowing)- I’ll go for you.

I believe when everything in Romans 8 has tried to separate me from the love of my Lord, trust remains.

Faith, hope and love all have trust as part of their construct. Trust is what helps me transition with my best self forward. For me, trust is precious because of my remembrance of life before it was built.

Having someone who loves me, in my dirtiest, ugliest, most disgusting places, having someone who knows the errors of my heart and mind, and still loves me, unconditionally, without requiring me to change for that love, has made trust bloom in the wilderness of what I once was. In Hebrew, the word for astonished has a dual meaning. In one context it means barren, a stony place. In another it means surprise, awe and wonderment. I find myself representing both, these days. having trust cultivated and grown in me has been a part of that transformation.

I am in the Gospel of Luke this week. I was reading today about the parable of the Minas.

Do you know the story?

A nobleman went into a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and return.

Before he leaves he calls ten servants and tells them to do business till he returns, and he gives them each a mina.

We read that his citizens hated him and sent a delegation after him saying he would not reign over them.

So the first servant turns the one into ten, the second servant turns the one into five. The third one hides his mina. In a handkerchief.

The nobleman returns, and he rewards those who made more out of what he gave them.

I have always heard this passage taught this way…Multiply what God has given you and he will reward you.

It is true, but today I am seeing a different picture.

When the man who hid his mina returns it to the nobleman, he says, I feared you, you are austere, you collect what you did not deposit and reap what you did not sow. The nobleman calls him wicked, not because he hid the mina but because he did it with what he believed about the nobleman. The nobleman says the servant’s own words judge him, because if he believed that, then he should have put it into the bank and earned interest.

It is not just our activities that God judges.

He looks at what our heart believes to be true about him, then sees if our actions line up with that, and then he rewards or disciplines.

I wish I had parented my children with this insight.

How we act on what we believe…is us judging ourselves. It is our choice to align with what we believe or to shrink from it, or to deny it.

What a good note to begin the day!

Selah.