Trust
One of my favorite theologians, Frederich Buechner, tells the following story (paraphrasing here):
One night it happens: people all around the world gaze into the night sky and there, blazoned in the stars, is the answer humans have sought for thousands of years. A message has appeared: God is real! There in plain view, written across the night sky is the proof we’ve been seeking. For a few weeks or months, the world is full of excitement. How can anyone doubt now? No longer must we wonder. Now we can KNOW.
But Buechner goes on to note, it doesn’t take long before some honest person dares to pose the obvious and inevitable question: So what?
So what if God is real? So what if God exists? It’s a totally fair question. How does just the knowledge of God’s existence matter? By itself, a cognitive affirmation of God’s reality doesn’t make any difference. After all, belief in the existence of god/gods/deities in some form or other has been shared by the majority of humans who’ve ever lived. Yet in western culture the concept of faith has become synonymous with “intellectual belief”: Do you believe in God? today is akin to discussing whether Santa Claus is real.
But Faith involves more than the notion that God exists. Biblical faith implies responding to the character and benevolent nature of God, a God we are told seeks relationship and connection with us, who covenants with us, who calls us Beloved.
Think of it this way: In traditional wedding vows, when couples get married, they don’t stand before one another and say Yes, I believe you exist.
(I can just hear the bride muttering, OK, honey, but I was really hoping for something more.)
No, they say things like I pledge you my troth – old-fashioned words, relational words, intended to define and determine the nature and course of their committed lives together. Words which express a lifelong pledge of faithfulness to the other, words that say: I belong to you. Where you go, I will go, I entrust myself and all that I have to you, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
Faith is not whether we THINK God is real, in an existential sense. Instead, it’s a response of TRUST with our whole person, body, heart, soul, and mind. The real issue is this:
Do we trust God’s love for us, enough to entrust ourselves to this God?
Do we believe this God intends good for us and for this world?
Since we all have trauma and loss in our lives, trusting is hard work and takes time. I’m reminded of when I once rescued a kitten from the wild, a tiny thing, whose terror of me was fierce. He had never been handled by a person before. So I made space for him in a spare room, with water and food, furniture under which he could hide, a soft pile of blankets for him to sleep. I then let him alone so he could explore, only gradually increasing my time in the room. I never grabbed for him, but just waited, a quiet presence there. Although it took many days before he drew close to me, longer to let me pet him, the joy was worth it.
Trusting others takes time. Trusting God can take even longer. But I trust that God makes that same kind of space for each of us if we are willing to give trusting a try. It’s worth the wait. And like my kitten, we can take as long as we need.
-- Kate Maynard
