Good morning. I would like to bring to our thoughts today a key ingredient required in making this day a righteous one in the Lord. That ingredient is trust.
Brennan Manning in his book Ruthless Trust wrote: “When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at ‘the house of the dying’ in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, ‘And what can I do for you?’ Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: ‘Pray that I have clarity.’
She said firmly, ‘No, I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.’”
Trusting God requires that we walk by faith, not by sight. That we learn how to bear with uncertainty, knowing we are secure in His everlasting arms. That we surrender our plans, believing that what He has in mind is far above what we can even think to ask or imagine.
I can understand the request of John Kavanaugh, for I, too, seek clarity. I long to know the details. It is hard for me to accept walking by faith and not by sight because I want to see, I want to know, I want to be certain that I will have some measure of control over the circumstances that enter my life. I don’t think that this desire is at all unnatural. In fact, I would guess that it is something most, if not all, of us seek.
The problem is that clarity is too often the opposite of trust. When we demand greater clarity in the details of each day we are, in effect, saying to God that our trust in Him needs to come from within our own understanding. We are suggesting to God that we will walk His path as long as we can be certain of the steps, guaranteed of our ability to have some control over the process. The difficulty is that the path we need to travel may require us to go through some very challenging places. There may be times of want and pain, times of disappointment and fatigue. What we don’t realize is that those challenging places in our walk are required to ensure our arrival at God’s destination. It would be appropriate to think of those kinds of places as discipline. While discipline is rarely enjoyable, it is undoubtedly necessary. Clarity would provide me with the opportunity to avoid those challenging places, while trust encourages me to move forward, knowing that my loving Father God is with me.
We know these beloved verses from Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Consider how greater clarity will defeat the intention of those verses. It is by relying on our own understanding that we fail to trust God and follow the path of our choosing. It is when we refuse to acknowledge Him, and trust instead in our own will that we find our paths crooked and troubled.
I will pray for greater trust, and I will give praise for God’s infinite patience. Perhaps you might join me in such a prayer?
God bless you with trust and a faithful spirit today!
Vern