Wednesday, February 17, 2016

... and trust

There is a beautiful rhetoric to the explanations to the 10 Commandments in Luther's Small Catechism.  The meaning to the first commandment is "We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things."  Then, every following meaning begins "We should fear and love God so that...."  It's fantastic -- everything flows from the first.  And we are used to and trained to view our actions in terms of loving and fearing the wrong things.

Of course, what of trust?

Consider, ponder your own actions.  And ask yourself a hard, hard question.  How much of it is a lack of trust, is simple insecurity?

Are you secure?  Do you actually trust God, that He knows what He is doing, even when He allows things in this life that you don't like?

Now, I'll admit, what got me thinking about this was viewing political interaction on facebook.  Even good, kind folks that I know will suddenly become the meanest and coarsest of people when getting into the random fights.  I know I do it myself... it's one of the reasons why I have tried to pull back from the whole melee lately.

And when I looked, when I observed - I saw plenty of false love, plenty of misplaced fear.  I'm used to seeing that.

But you know what?  I saw, beneath both of those, simple insecurity.  False love and misplaced fears run rampant, and why?  Because I am insecure.  I don't trust.  And if *I* don't act, if I don't convince people to do things *my* way, everything will fall apart.

It's a lie.

It's the lie of the tempter from the garden.

"You will be like God."

You will be the source of your own security.

I saw this while watching just obvious ripples of insecurity and fear and desperate appeals for approval go streaking out on-line, but it applies to everything, though.  Every sin, every messed up thought, word, or deed... all driven by insecurity.

To that I say - Christ Jesus has died for you.  You are forgiven.  Because He is risen, you too shall rise.

It's as simple and secure as that.

God grant me faith to remember that more and more over and against my own insecurities!

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