How Much Can We Trust God?

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. (Psalm 42:1-4 ESV).

Sometimes it’s just better to be a little more specific. “I can trust God with this” has all kinds of implications that bring peace in the midst of life’s chaotic thoughts and emotions. Let me start a list that you can finish at your experience. These things are in no particular order. They simply come as I have thought about them:  I can trust God with the timing of my loved one’s death.  I can trust God with the way my loved one died.  I can trust God with the unknowns about my future.  I can trust God with my unanswered questions until faith becomes sight.  I can trust God to heal the hurt.  I can trust God to fill the emptiness.  I can trust God to illumine this darkness.  I can trust God to restore joy to my life.  I can trust God to speak to me through his word.  I can trust God to supply sufficient grace and divine power for facing whatever comes.  I can trust God to cause this to work together for my good and for the good of others impacted by this, to conform us more closely to the image of Christ.  I can trust God that resurrection day is really coming and it will be worth all the waiting.  I can trust that God knows who belongs to him, even if I don’t know if my loved one belonged to him.  I can trust that God will do what is right, even if I don’t know what God will do.  I can put my trust in a God who is merciful and loves to save, even if I don’t know if my loved one trusted in that mercy or took hold of that salvation. When the sorrow of life seemed to mock his dependence on God, the psalmist wrote the incredible words of trust and hope in our reading today. Even when everyone is discouraging us, we can remember the goodness of our god and know there is so much more to come.