Part of this week's heart focus on Trust
It’s morning, but the wind has not woke. Along the lane, the spruce trees slumber under heavy blankets of winter. Down in the orchard, the apple trees have tugged some of the eiderdown up across naked limbs, pulling warmth close. Last night’s wind song has lulled the world into deep sleep.
I walk the fields. This land, always my returning metaphor, the central metaphor, for this life we live here. (Is that why He calls us to dwell in the land?) A crow sets down, circles, lights. I watch him land in a hemlock on wood’s edge, snow showering down.
In the middle (or is it?) of the monochrome freshness rolled out, near the scruff of grasses poking along the old fence bottom, I stop, turn back. My tracks, pewter on pristine, trail behind, marking what’s been. Back behind the shed, tumbling down the hills past the barn, out through the hollow, they thread. But ahead, this endless sea of white, milk spilled across these farms, pooling around me , ahead stretches untried. W
ill I muddle the clean with my mucky ways? Will I, unaware, plunge down too deep, thrash about in pain and sadness? What knot lurks on tomorrow’s trail?A gust of stinging cold blasts down the hill. I tighten my scarf. Winter stirs, fears whispering on the wind. I feel my own mounting.
Once asked if he could define the Christian life in a single sentence, a student apparently didn’t blink before replying, “
I can define it in a single word: trust.” Standing there knee high in winter lace, is that another word mingling with wind’s howl? Trust, trust. Trust that the way across the fields, a life, will make itself known, will be well.
Trust whom? Surely, He who carries from those tracks behind, into now, out across the future. Is He worthy of trust? In looking back on the warp and weave of the tracks, in the remembering, clarity rises, cream coming to the top.
The act of looking back, track-pondering, is trust’s germ. Taking time to recollect, intentionally pausing, to remember the ways in which He has carried down, over and through the mires of the past, nourishes a trust that strips the fears and regales the faith. The choice to turn from the future fears and turn to recall who He has been through deaths, divorces, disappointments, unveils again the tender heart of He who winnows the way across the valleys to come, reveals His trustworthy character. Yes, true, there is the sense we forget what is behind, what has weighed down and burdened, what untruths the wicked one tangles and strangles us in, but doesn’t the Biblical narrative bear evidence: looking back gives courage for the trail ahead.
David turns too and track ponders:
“Yahweh, my God, I cried out to you for help,And you healed me. Yahweh, you pulled my life back up from Sheol, made me alive again rather than an inhabitant of the Pit.” ~Ps. 30:2-3
He remembers his personal history—His story tracking across our fields. And in the intimate recalling, he encounters again Yahweh as Jehovah Jireh, his Provider. In the retracing, David again knows a reliable, trustworthy God who will never leave nor forsake him. But he can’t see that all so clearly when he peers ahead, squinting into the future. Clarity, hopeful trust for tomorrow, is often glimpsed in the shade of the path behind. David’s recollection tunes his heart to sing the final line of that psalm, “
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.” Trust strengthened.
Looking down at my boots, I tromp north now, wondering and wandering. The words that crackled from the radio the other night home through the dark revisit. It’s the voice of Evelyn Husband, wife of Rick Husband, an astronaut whose soul never returned to earth after the crash of the shuttle Columbia. Speaking of all the feelings that surged in the moments and days after the crash, and the realization that Rick was never returning to their earthly home,
she said, “Deep inside, I knew God was going to walk me through this somehow. I knew it because he’d walked with me through other crises earlier in my life ... That’s why when you walk through a crisis, it’s so important to have a foundation of faith already established. Because you have to know whose hand you’re holding in order to step into the darkness of an uncertain future. ”
Evelyn Husband turned and looked back. And trust sprung up.
In remembering how God had carried her through the tight, suffocating places, this woman whose heart suffered third-degree burns when a shuttle scorched through earth’s atmosphere, she knew that He too would tenderly bind up these new wounds. Would thrust markers down to show her the way. Would grab her hand, let her lean into Him, and take each anguishing step with her. Just as He had done before. That, in looking back, the character of God stepped out of the shadows. God could be trusted. Even in this.
Brennan Manning writes, “
The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness.”
Isn’t this another paradox of the faith walk: trust for the future has its roots in gratitude for the past. I have begun to test the outer rim of this, wading into the shallows. I recall gifts:
little fingers stroking Mama hair...butter saturating pancakes...the script of a childhood friend tucked in the mail...a psalm that grips in the morning and carries throughout the day...the fragrance of a hyacinth blooming on the windowsill, snow falling outside...
Daily gratitude establishes a foundation of faith, trust, for whatever the path holds ahead. In the remembering, the looking back at the blessings, I see what God has done. But more. I see who God is. Loving. Sustaining. Faithful. The One who fills wandering ones with faith.
This homeward track pocking the snow isn’t empty, but full of faith.
I know His hand.
Lord, cause me to remember the blessings. For gratefulness for what You have done nourishes my trust in what You will do.
Begin you own One Thousand Gift List
watch hands always saying it's time to pray
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