Watertight

My God, in You I trust.  Let me be not shamed, let my enemies not gloat over me.  Psalm 25:2  Robert Alter translation

I trust – When I read these words from the psalmist, I get discouraged.  He trusted in God in everything.  Why can’t I be like that?  Growing up in Hellenism, I learned how to compartmentalize life.  This part for work, that part for family, this part for church, that part for me.  Privacy is a concomitant of compartments.  Each place securely kept under lock and key.  I learned to be many different persons, disjointedly held together by occasional vulnerability and exposure.  But most of the time my life involved secrets. 

The psalmist seems to have a completely different view of the world.  He is concerned with glass-house public exposure living in the open existence.  In Hebraic thought, this is the only basis for a claim that “I trust in God.”  In Hebraic thought, you cannot trust God in secret.  God is not the God of watertight compartments.  He is the God of wide-open spaces.  In fact, the Hebrew idea of deliverance is a picture of an open plain, removed from narrow and confining valleys.  You and I walk through the valley of the shadow of death so we can get to the open field, not so we can stay in the narrow strait.  The psalmist knows that trusting God means transparency.  It’s a return to the Garden where there was nothing to hide.  “I trust in You” is the equivalent of “I see You, through and through.”

Now there is no question that God sees us completely.  If that is so, why do we struggle to trust Him?  It’s not as if we can keep a secret from God.  He knows, period.  The issue isn’t actually about God’s understanding.  It’s about our fear.  If I live a life of watertight compartments, exposing all of them involves fear.  Why?  Because I have grown up in the private world.  I wasn’t raised in public.  I was raised in the labyrinth of hidden desire.  I was taught to keep things to myself.  I carry lots of keys.  The first step to trusting God is to admit that I carry lots of keys.  I must tell Him that I have a lot of rooms that need to be unlocked, a lot of doors that must be opened, a lot of keys that need to be thrown away.  I recognize this but often find I am unable to take this step.  “Why,” I ask, “am I so hesitant when I know He already knows anyway?”

Trust!  Batah!   I’m afraid.  When I hold the keys to locked doors I feel safer.  There is a place I can run to if things get really bad.  A place sealed off from the rest of my chaotic life.  Watertight.  And unhealthy.  If I am going to trust God, I will have to answer and apply the following:

1. Does God love me?  Not the me that everyone thinks I am, but the me I know, the private, scared me.  Does God love me?
2. Is God disappointed in me?  Does He turn His back on me?  Have I gone too far for Him?
3. Does God desire what’s best for me?  Do I really think that He is for me?  Are His intentions fulfilling?  Will I find myself in the open if I follow Him?
4. Am I afraid to follow Him?  Is He really good?  Would He ever harm me? 
5. Am I able to trust Him just for this minute?  Does He care about me right now? 

Trust.  To feel secure.  Knowing He cares and will doing something about it.  Knowing He does not fail.  I don’t believe in God.  I hope in Him—because I have to.  I can’t hope in me.  I have already failed myself too many times.  I have to hope in someone who doesn’t fail, and there is only One like that.  I don’t believe in God.  I put myself in His hands and expect deliverance.  I dream of the day of complete rescue, the day when all the doors are opened and there is nothing to hide.  I dream of the Technicolor Garden in my backyard.

Topical Index:  trust, batah, hope, fear, Psalm 25:2