Don Friesen
I was eighteen years old when I worked on a pipeline in northern Manitoba. The pipes we laid were forty-eight feet long and three feet in diameter. The water that would eventually flow through the pipes would add to the weight of the pipeline, so it had to rest on a solid base. Usually that wasn't a problem; one didn't have to dig too far to find bedrock, but there was a section near the river that was troublesome. Excavation revealed permafrost, which, when exposed to air, thaws, and the layers of ice and soil dissolve into one mucky mess that is neither solid nor easy to work in.
Constructing pipelines or buildings on permafrost is difficult, and two of the first homes built in Thompson, Manitoba were not built on foundations that rested on bedrock. There is a decided tilt to the two homes, which are adjacent to each other and tile in opposite directions. Living in them must be like preparing a meal in the Crazy Kitchen at the Museum of Science and Technology!
There is a wonderful hymn in our old hymnal that didn't make the cut in the new hymnal and that contains the line, "Who trusts in God's unchanging love builds on a rock that nought can move." ("If Thou but Suffer God to Guide Thee," Mennonite Hymnal, #314) Trust is the bedrock of relationships, be those friendships, marital relationships, congregational relationships, or any other matrix of relationships. To have each other's trust is a blessing; to jeopardize the trust we have in each other is very risky.
Trust is a delicate thing, and there are many whose trust is already shaken during their childhood and who find it difficult to trust others because of traumatic childhood experiences. Novelist John Updike writes of an individual whose trust was shattered when his father failed to hold him up in the swimming pool. From this one childhood experience, the individual goes on to experience a series of failed trusts. (Trust Me, cited in Fire in the Bones, by Robert A. Wallace) I can only imagine the issues of trust through which an abused child has to navigate. One can only weep and mourn the waste of human energy and potential because parents and/or other adults abused the trust of children.
There are other, less traumatic things that inhibit our trust but that are painful, nonetheless. Broken promises inhibit our trust. Irresponsible behaviour inhibits trust. Fear inhibits our trust. Manipulative behaviour may cause us to withhold our trust. Betrayal inhibits if not destroys trust. The Old Testament psalmist writes, "Even my best friend, the one I trusted most, the one who shared my food, has turned against me." (Psalm 41:9, TEV) Sometimes, when we share deeply of ourselves with others and meet nothing but reserve or a polite facade in response, our trust becomes insecure, and is shaken.
Too many of these corrosive experiences and we begin to resemble the knight in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1865), who travelled with a beehive attached to his saddle so that he could have honey to eat. He also travelled with mouse traps to catch any mice he might encounter. And then there was the knight's own invention, anklets around the feet of the horse to guard against the bites of sharks whenever the horse crossed water. Too many experiences with deception and distrust and we become the knight's fellow traveller, loaded down with defences, proceeding through life in an exceedingly cautious manner, extremely guarded, always vigilant, ever prudent! The strain of being on guard and suspicious all the time, however, cannot help but take a heavy emotional toll.
Garrison Keillor complains about his home community, which taught him to be suspicious of everyone! "You taught me," he writes, "that...the world is fundamentally deceptive. The better something looks, the more rotten it probably is down deep. Some people were fooled but not you. You could always see the underlying truth, and the truth was ugly... This teaching has led me, against my better judgment," says Keillor, "to suspect people of trying to put one over. At the checkout counter, I lean forward to catch the girl if she tries to finesse an extra ten cents on the peaches. That's how Higgledy-Piggledy makes a profit. That's why cashiers ring up the goods so fast, to confuse us." (Lake Wobegon Days, page 265)
Trust is a delicate matter, prompting an ancient commentator to write, "Trust, like the soul, never returns, once it is gone." (Publilius Syrus) A world without trust is a frightening prospect, but I like to think of that among Christians trust can be re-built. And I am encouraged by some of my own experiences that involved serious breaches of trust but which, with time, have healed and hopefully added another layer of wisdom about relationships.
What is truly frightening, however, is when our trust in God is eroded. Our trust in God is particularly tested when things are beyond our control. Many things in life are a gamble over which we have but limited control. Surgery is a gamble; marriage is a gamble; crossing the street is a gamble! If we have children, we want them to be born healthy, but we have little control over their health. We want our children to develop into fine citizens, but the control we have over them in their younger years wanes only too soon, as they learn, rightfully so, to make their own decisions. We want our children to love God and to love the church, as we do, but that is another matter beyond our control.
There is a wonderful device in each of our homes called the remote control. Initially it was designed to change television channels without having to stand up, but its primary function is to act as a barometer of the human need to control things. In our family, there are two such individuals – I won't mention any names, but we know who we are – and it's difficult for people like us to relinquish control.
Nothing challenges our need to control as much as a terminal illness. A man who received such a diagnosis prayed long and hard, but he confesses that he was scared. He continued to pray, however, and one night while he lay in bed, unable to sleep, he said, "I had this overwhelming sense that even if everything is not going to be all right, I will be all right. Even if the diagnosis turns out to be devastating, even if this kills me, I'll be all right." In a terrifying encounter with his own mortality, he entrusted his life – and death – to God.
Rachel Naomi Remen, a doctor who has treated many people with life-threatening illnesses and whose insights into human beings are powerful, writes about her experience with prayer while lying on the operating table herself. The surgeon offered a simple, traditional aboriginal prayer before her surgery, praying, "May we be helped to do here whatever is most right." (Kitchen Table Wisdom, page 271) It gave her a deep sense of peace.
Remen says that "prayer may be less about asking for the things we are attached to than it is about relinquishing our attachments in some way." (Wisdom, page 270) That was her own experience. "At its deepest," she writes, "prayer is a statement about causality. Turning toward prayer is a release from the arrogance and vulnerability of an isolated and individual causality. When we pray, we stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life. It is an opportunity to experience humility and recognize grace." (Wisdom, page 271)
This is a lesson that I need to learn: to wait patiently for the Lord, trusting that God will hear my cry, that God will pull me out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon the bedrock of God's promises. (Psalm 40:1-2) God may not protect us from every untoward experience, but God promises to bless us with His presence in the midst of those experiences. Therefore the promise, written by Isaiah, "Thou dost keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in thee." (Isaiah 26:3, RSV) And the observation of the psalmist, who tells us that those in trust in God are "not afraid of ...bad news...." (Psalm 112:7, TEV)
May we learn to find our strength and courage in our trust in God. May we learn to trust in God more deeply, so that in all circumstances, even those beyond our control, we can face them with a serenity of spirit. AMEN
Quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise noted.