Trust

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 you trust God."

Craving Clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love. When all is unclear, the heart of trust says as Jesus did on the cross, "into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46)

Oh how i struggle with simply craving clarity, craving revelation, craving new knowledge and new insights. I read almost everyday and love learning new things and would consider my hunger for knowledge one of my greatest strenghts and yet at the same time also one of my biggest weaknesses.Rather than applying what i already know, I tend to function on epiphany alone, moving from one new idea to another as fast as i can wrap my brain around it. I have such a tendency to seek new revelation instead of applying the revelation God has already given me. Perhaps in reality my most urgent need in life is to trust the insight i have already recieved.

Of what avail is our life of prayer, our study of scripture, theology and spirituality, if we do not trust the insights we have recieved?

At some point we have to decide to trust the voice that says "I love you. I knot you together in your mothers womb" (Psalm 139:13). And suspect that fidelity thru the way of trust will lead us to the same place it took Job: "Even though he slay me, yet I will Trust him" (Job 13:15)


** Much of this was borrowed and edited from Brennan Manning's "Ruthless Trust"