Life reflections...

What do we mean when we say that we 'put our trust' in God?

This question is pertinent given that we use the phrase so frequently.But what, in a very practical sense, does this mean for you? We say the words, but when push comes to shove, do we really mean what we say?

There often comes a time in our lives when we turn to God to provide us with 'the perfect solution' to our problems. I remember as a child trying to 'bargain' with God: "Please just let me have this one little thing God, and I promise I'll go to early morning Mass every day for a year!" (or variations on the theme). Sometimes things even worked out my way, but most of the time it seemed that either God wasn't listening, or else the answer was "No!".

It never occurred to me as a child that my own 'solutions' and God's might be something very different (it never occurs to a lot of adults either!). In my youth I would analyse everything and come up with what I was sure would be the 'best' solutions to my problems. I would then 'hand it over' like some sort of shopping list God was supposed to fill,never even entertaining the possibility that my own solutions may not be good for me, let alone 'the best' in God's eyes. As I grew older I would pay lip-service to 'handing it over to God'. The truth was, I'd be saying; "Take it!" to God, only to turn straight around and take it back again the minute my prayers were done, wondering why I didn't feel any better! It took crisis in my life to disabuse me of these silly notions about God, and to bless me with an opportunity to get to know God a little better. When all the old security blankets turnout to be nothing but ashes and you're left with little choice but to trust God, the good news is that God is entirely trustworthy!

Milly's reflection today sits very comfortably with today's reading and with the podcast reflection which you can find at pray-as-you-go.org. The music is "Hear my prayer, Oh Lord" by Henry Purcell sung by the choir of the King's Consort directed by Robert King.

Crisis can be wonderful for realigning our perspectives about life, don't you think? Whatever our personal story may be, crisis catapults us right out of our comfort zones and challenges us to find new ways forward, the 'old ways' having broken down. My own experience of crisis taught me that God had far more windswept and interesting solutions to my problems than anything I could have ever dreamed up. My job seemed to be to pay very close attention to what God was revealing in my life. Gone were the shopping lists, the bargaining, the endless analyses. Gone was pretty much everything— 'all bets are off' — and I found before me a blank slate.So, instead of telling God what I thought should happen as I had always done in the past, I began to learn the art of listening … and it turns out that God never shuts up!

God is in every moment of every day, working in everything and everyone,and we prove it with every breath we are given. Set out on a day of 'God spotting' and you'll find God on every street corner, in the face of every child, every sunset, every blade of grass, each other. Our task, as I see it, is to keep our eyes wide open, to "stay awake" as Scripture tells us, to recognise that God is already at work in our lives and the lives of others.

In fact, the only drawback I can see to trusting God is that you never really know what's going to happen next. The upside is that God always seems to come up with far more interesting solutions than anything we could ever 'ask for or imagine' — and our prayers are soon transformed from "Please?" to "Thank you!".

Milly

Photo Credit: Glass Light Photographer: Santiago Arce, Naucalpan,Mexico City. Image sourced from stock.xchng

[Index of Commentaries by Amanda McKenna]