If anyone asked you if you would trust God implicitly in all things, all the time, could you say yes? If you’re anything like me, the first words out of your mouth, without hesitation would be: Yes, yes I will!
But this is a question that requires more from us than a simple assent. We’re not being asked something inconsequential, as though God wants to know if we’d like cookies or ice cream for dessert. We are being asked to change our entire lives with this one simple word. We can’t say that we trust, and then go on as before, as if we hadn’t heard the call and answered.
To trust God is an entirely different thing than trusting your insurance agent. The insurance agent‘s job is to sell you expensive policies you can’t really afford to have some sort of guarantee that help will be available in a crisis. But buying this, showing that trust in a piece of paper, does not require much on our part. We pay the premiums and forget about it. Having it does not change our life in any way, nor does it require anything of us.
Trust in God is an entirely different matter. Trusting God means safety, yes. The assurance that our immortal souls are in His hands, and He’s not about to let go. But this trust doesn’t sit in the drawer gathering dust with all our other policies. This trust requires that we act.
Because we trust, we will step out of our comfort zone and try that new ministry, join a Bible study, volunteer at the soup kitchen in the scary neighborhood (with prudent caution for physical safety of course). And we will find that we will gain far more than we gave up. No one remembers what they saw on TV last week, but everyone remembers the people they meet and the times they spend helping others.
The more we trust, the more we do, and the more we do, the more He will ask us to do. For me, that has been a marvelous vocation journey.
On my very first monastery visit, I flew across the country and into a blizzard, on the only plane to land that day at a supposedly closed airport. I’ve gone back and forth across the country four times since then, each time wondering if this is it, only to be told not quite yet. I spent one very arduous year dedicated to digging deeper into the well of personal spiritual growth I can hear all of you farther along on your journeys than I am saying that there is no such thing as done.
And you are right. I keep thinking I’m almost there, but then He asks me to trust Him through another step. I’m finally learning how to say yes and follow, and not see these steps as delays or obstructions, but as mind and soul-clearing times that will enable me to do whatever work He has chosen for me to do.
I thought I knew how to trust God until I actually did, and discovered that it’s not the words that taught me to trust, but the simple act of following. I said yes, and have never looked back. Say yes too, and your life will change in ways you never imagined.
Copyright © 2013, Carol Ann Chybowski
Carol Ann Chybowski
Carol Ann Chybowski is a long time member of the Catholic Writers Guild. She has published book reviews at various websites and appears in two volumes of A Community of Voices: An Anthology of Santa Barbara. When not busy about her parish, Carol Ann can be found knitting, gardening, or on horseback.
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