Trust: It's hard and it hurts.

So during Mass and more specifically, the excellent homily this evening, God asked me: “What do you want?” The word that came to my mind was: “Trust.” And then Jesus scoffed at me a little, and rightly so. He and I have had several talks about trust. This weekend, I came up with two feeble reasons for why I struggle to trust God.

1) Trust is hard…especially trusting in God. I always, always always ALWAYS think my plans are pretty fullproof. So why do I need to trust God? I got this. But obviously after re-reading my blog posts, this reason is a pride thing…and my plans suck compared to His. AND…didn’t Christ have it hard when He had to carry that heavy wooden cross up the hill?

2) Trust hurts…especially when its damaged. I’ve been betrayed before, and I can think of few other things that hurt more than feeling betrayed. But when I stammer about my overwhelming suffering, Jesus noted that these sufferings come as the result of human failings, not His. In addition, he pointed out the hurt He suffered physically during His passion. And if I’m still not convinced, He reminds me of the hurt that I can relate to at least a little better: the hurt He suffered in His heart. His friends and followers spit on Him and cursed Him on the way up to Calvary; by then His bestest best friends had long since deserted Him. I thought my experience with betrayal was awful, but I cannot imagine the magnitude of the painful ache in His heart.

Anyways, as I contemplated this hardness and hurting of Trust, Christ seemed to say to me: Why don’t you trust Me? I will never let you down. You have never been hurt by my failings, because I have never failed you, and I never will. You will never need to trust in broken humans who fail you, so you won’t hurt. First argument fails. Secondly, trusting Me in everything you do may seem hard, but why should it be? If you have faith in Me and I promise to protect you (which I obviously have), who can stand against you? (Romans 8:31) If you have My purpose behind you, you can do anything. (Philippians 4:13) So the things you must do may be hard, but trust won’t be hard either. Second argument fails.

So in conclusion, the Master of the universe makes for a very convincing logician. I’ll have to process this some more. But I do want to trust. And that’s a start.

"Loving Father, grant me the grace to trust You, in all things."

May you humbly, completely trust your God, the One who will always love you.

Grace to you, and peace!