Trusting

For many of us, our lives are filled with thoughts about the future. Because of the economic down-turn, many of us are asking questions about what’s next and what that means, whether for financial decisions, jobs or careers, or housing situation.

The past few weeks, I’ve been pondering some familiar verses from the book of Proverbs:

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart,
Lean not on your own understanding,
In all your ways submit to him
And he will make your paths straight.” (Prov 3:5-6)

One thing that was interesting to me is that the word trust derived its meaning in the Hebrew from the idea of “lying helplessly face downward.” When you combine this with the call to ‘lean not on your own understanding’ we get a pretty fascinating picture of what we are to do.

We shouldn’t lean on our wisdom, but fall helplessly face-down before our God who is all-wise.

Trust isn’t about trying to figure it all out, but admitting we need help. It isn’t about trying to hold everything together so we understand it, but putting our helpless selves into the gracious and wise care of God.

May we be the sort of people who begin to trust the Lord with all our heart as we admit our helplessness before the future.