Trust Anyway
Where is God?
This week I’ve been sick with bronchitis. As I’ve cycled through the gamut of symptoms—sore throat, dripping nose, hacking cough, chest congestion—I’ve become more and more withdrawn from the world.
You’ve probably been there at some point; illnesses have a tendency to be all-consuming. It can be hard to imagine caring about the outside world again, let alone ever feeling well again, ever laughing again, ever having energy again.
But I trust that will happen.
In some small, micro-cosmic way, I think this bit of trusting is analogous to trusting that God will be there for me even when I don’t feel as if that’s possible or can’t imagine how that might be true.
This week’s Narrative Lectionary reading tells the story of God stopping Saul blind in his persecuting-tracks on the road to Damascus. If this wasn’t miracle enough, God calls a disciple, Ananias, to aid this very man seeking to destroy him. What a set up! Saul has literally been blinded, and Ananias is “blind” in that he doesn’t know what has just happened to Saul. And Ananias certainly has good reason to avoid this man about whom he has heard horrific stories.
Both had good reason not to trust. But it’s actually Ananias’s decision to trust that intrigues me most. I imagine everything in Ananias’s being screaming at him, “No, this crazy. This man wants to murder me. Don’t do this!”
But he decided to trust God anyway.
How is it possible to shift from not trusting to trust?
These days, there are multiple reasons to mistrust, whether the cause is the prevalence of scams or a government that changes the story daily or people who’ve let us down. In these situations, my trust factor hovers around zero. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when it comes to my four brothers and sisters, my trust factor is definitely a ten! Yet when it comes to my trust in God, my level of faith can vary.
I think questions of faith happen for most of us at one time or another. Something jolting happens, and we wonder where God is. Our world gets turned upside down in a shocking way, and we have a hard time believing God is still with us.
This week, I decided to lift the lid off a few of my unbelieving moments to remind myself what I did in times when I didn’t trust God.
- When I can’t trust, I open my eyes to see what I can trust.
- When I can’t trust, I borrow someone else’s faith for a while.
- When I can’t trust, I pray for trust.
I open my eyes . . .
Before I moved to California, I thought the ground was solid. But my first earthquake changed that! What I had taken for granted would always be firm under my feet turned into something more like wiggly Jello. The feeling that I could no longer count on the earth definitely rattled my trust.
These days, when I experience an earthquake of doubt (usually not dramatic, more like a rumbling around 2.0 on the Richter scale), taking a close look around me helps. I look for people and things I can and do trust. In a way it’s like a second-hand trust, but seeing things I can tangibly trust helps restore my first-hand trust in “blind” faith.
Right now, spring is showing up big time. Buds are popping out on branches of the tree outside my window, which has looked dead for months. The neighbor’s lawn has a red bud tree bursting into full color. Down the road I see a magnolia tree beginning to bloom. And the Arboretum’s “Spring Bloom” report this week announces that the daffodils are making their annual appearance in the Daffodil Glade!
Then there are the birds, singing their songs, building nests, gathering in groups to chat in the trees. And, yesterday, my neighbor told me that the two “local” sandhill cranes have returned again this year.
How could I not trust these signs of new life? How could I not trust the Maker of it all?
This week’s special bonus brought the return of Artemis II from its 10-day journey around the moon. The incredible photos of our planet earth and our moon and sun taken from the spacecraft are, literally, awesome. As astronaut Victor Glover said, “It’s too big to just be in one body.” Looking at these images and hearing the astronauts speak of “moon joy” have been wonderfully restoring for me. I’ve not only felt connected with humanity on a welcome level but have also felt an overwhelming awe at this glimpse of God’s unlimited creation.
My response makes me think of a line from a science fiction book I am currently re-reading, The Sparrow by anthropologist Mary Doria Russell: “It was increasingly difficult to resist the beauty of belief.”
I believe the beauty of our natural world and the fathomless universe in which we live is one of God’s ways to lead us to the beauty of belief.
I borrow . . .
Given the multiple global crises that surround us, I can empathize a little with Saul’s and Ananias’s state of blindness because I am certainly feeling a little blind-sided. It’s not just that I can’t see what’s ahead (who of us can?), but I can’t envision anything good coming out of this mess we’re in. I know I’m not alone in this. I saw a CBS News poll reporting that 68% of Americans are worried, 57% are stressed, and 54% are angry.
This week’s news also brought more than its share of bad-news headlines: threats to obliterate a civilization, the collapse of peace talks, entire communities being bombed. All the while, our local woes mirror the global crises, from angry in-fighting to almost untenable costs of everything from gas to peanut butter.
Yet in this same week, we’re hearing about the end of Hungary’s dictatorship, about the promise of healthcare for all in Mexico, about calls for peace from the Pope.
Can we borrow a little trust from these hopeful signs?
During a recent Prayer Vigil for Peace, ten thousand people gathered outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to hear Pope Leo speak these words:
War divides; hope unites. Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. Idolatry blinds us; the living God enlightens . . . All it takes is a little faith, a mere ‘crumb’ of faith, in order to face this dramatic hour in history together.
—Vatican News
Can we borrow a little trust from these words?
I think back to a time when my faith in God had been deeply eroded. It was a tough period in my life, and the idea that God might be with me during those days felt almost laughable. Yet, something in me still wanted to believe.
I happened to be on a trip with a friend, and one night after we had both headed off to our rooms, I just couldn’t sleep. My mind was wrestling with the giant question of the reality of God. Was God anywhere in the universe, let alone in my personal chaos? Finally, I gave up on my internal battle and trundled over to my friend’s room. I knew her to be a woman of faith, so I just blurted out, “Tell me about your God.”
As I listened to her calm, steady words telling me about her experience of a caring God, of seeing God work in a community, of praying through her journal writing, I began to feel a softening in my barricaded places. I felt as if I could “borrow” her God until I found my way back to my own understanding of God.
Another line in Mary Doria Russell’s book comes to mind as I search for words to describe that night:
. . . one night, I just let myself consider the possibility that this is what it seems to be. That something extraordinary is happening. That God has something in mind for me.
—Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow
Sometimes “borrowing” another’s words helps me realize I’m not alone, that other people have experienced what I’m experiencing. And come through it. So I borrow a few more words, this time from Robert Harris’s novel Conclave (also made into the movie by the same title):
Our faith is a living thing because it walks hand in hand with doubt.
—Robert Harris, Conclave
Those words feel as if they were written for me. I keep seeking ways to keep faith alive, especially when I’m feeling depressed or doubtful. I keep looking for ways to make space for hope. Maybe that’s why I resonate so much with Rocky Kanaka’s “Sitting with Dogs” videos. When he enters a kennel and sees a shut-down, scared dog hiding in a corner—a dog that no longer trusts humans—he uses whatever it takes to create a bit of hope for that dog, from offering dog treats, to softly telling the dog she’s a “good dog,” to reaching out with a tentative touch. His core belief is that “if you allow space for hope, hope can fill the room.”
I, too, will keep on doing whatever it takes to make room for hope, for trust.
I pray . . .
As I live into the later years of my life, I am in the process of decluttering, getting rid of stuff I no longer need, and giving away what might help someone else. One of the things I came across in my garage is a plastic bin full of old journals and scraps of my writings, some going back more than fifty years.
Particular pieces bring back old memories, and some of the writing is way too personal to save for others to go through after I’m gone. As I’m thumbing through and shredding, I’m taking time to read some of them. Last week I came across words I had written almost thirty years ago, during a time of tough doubt, and they moved me deeply these many years later:
I feel as if God is someone I’ve outgrown. I’ve abandoned the simplistic answers of “God will take care of you,” and I’ve broken the mold of being what a“ “Christian” was supposed to be, as I’ve been taught.
But, somehow, the bottom-line truth of God’s existence keeps hounding me, as if there is a power—or a love—that will not let go.
I can hardly imagine praying. But, perhaps, if I remove the word “pray” and experiment with the idea of having a conversation with God, maybe there’s a way I can do this.
I want to ask God, “Who are you?”
I’m afraid to ask, but I’m afraid to not ask.
I’m afraid there will be no response, and I’m afraid God will respond.
So I give myself a small space
of silence
to sit
to listen
to hear
to hope.
And I pray, “God, are you there?”
Even now, all these years later, I find this simple form of quiet, listening prayer a helpful way to infuse my doubt with trust.
I’m so grateful that scripture includes the story in the Gospel of Mark about the father who brings his son to Jesus to heal. The father’s honest words, “I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:14-29) grab me. They encapsulate my tension between trusting and not trusting, having faith and doubting at the same time.
During times when I feel rubbed raw with this tension, I can only pray:
O God, I am so fragile:
my dreams get broken,
my heart gets broken,
my body gets broken.
What can I believe
except that you will not despise a broken heart,
that old and broken people shall yet dream dreams.
that the lame shall leap for joy, the blind see, the deaf hear.
What can I believe
except what Jesus taught,
that only what is first broken, like bread, can be shared,
that only what is broken is open to your entry . . .
So I believe.
Help my unbelief.
—excerpt adapted from “What Can We Believe,” from Guerrillas of Grace by Ted Loder
—Marcia Broucek, graphic designer for Narrative Alive
I welcome your comments about my reflections. If you have anything you want to share about your journey, I invite you to share your experience in the Comments field below.
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Click here to see the Narrative Alive graphics and sermon themes for the Narrative Lectionary reading “Paul’s Conversion.”
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
