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
[First, an apology. Since the death of Rosanne’s mother, our lives have been in continuing chaos. We have been staying in Rosanne’s mother’s condo in Florida. That is part of a trust Now that both her parents are dead, the will calls for all the properties to be sold, and we are officially homeless. We have to be out by March 27. That isn’t quite as bad as it seems since we already have most of our possessions in storage, but it does mean more packing and moving in a short time. You know the drill. So our days are filled with all this chaos—and I still have to travel for conferences, etc. Essentially, we have about 10 uncommitted days to accomplish removing ourselves from Florida. Fortunately, we were already planning a two month stay in Parma, Italy, so we will go there while we try to sort out what to do next. What this means for you is that my writing time is extremely limited, so I have decided to resend some material from a few years ago, just for the next week while I try to catch up. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, sometimes it’s good to read something again after some time has passed . You never know what you might discover the second time around. Now back to the text.]
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:
- 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?
- Is God disappointed in me? Does He turn His back on me? Have I gone too far for Him?
- 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?
- Am I afraid to follow Him? Is He really good? Would He ever harm me?
- 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
The world does not do exchange on the basis of trust: indeed I think the main thing about the open world (vs. the quintessential “sealed compartment” of the church?) is that it has to operate on the brutal honesty that admits that nobody is trustworthy. Nope: the world negotiates. But, the church does, too! Look at HOW most false doctrine orients itself around some form of bringing a Cain offering (“works”): negotiations, all. The family negotiates, also. The parent wheedles the two-year old: “if you do this, I will do that”. The parent sends the message “I do not trust you: I do not trust reality to teach you, either!” So just where are we to learn how to do said trust when nobody nowhere is trusting us?
So how do we learn to trust God? In a vacuum? Surprisingly, what I found at the end of decades of silence was that God had been trusting me (well, really Himself – the “faith OF God”) all along: trusting the weight of the curses: trusting that I would get tired enough: trusting that I would eventually remember. He did not condemn me, try to negotiate with me(!) or disrespect my choices. He just waited.
So I decided that, because that was the only experience of trust I had had to date, that I would do it back: learn to wait, that is. It was hard! I would decide to trust in a place where fear was rising, and the milliseconds felt like eternity. I wanted Him to fix it and to comfort me NOW! But in the garden of that waiting space, I found my faith starting to grow. The sky did not fall on Chicken Little (a false core belief); I did not die (another false core belief); I found that God still loved me – still not condemn me(!) – I found lots of surprising things while I waited (new experience) about myself, reality, etc. I found that fear was operating in a huge vacuum where negotiations (forced outcomes) had been preventing me from experiencing any new learning about how things really worked.
I found that this lack of real info – real feedback resulting from TRUSTING reality for real information – was what was actually driving the insanity that caused me to repeat mistakes over and over. When I started waiting, I broke the vicious cycle of beliefs and behaviors that reinforced those beliefs. Waiting on the Lord: who knew that everything I had been needing all along was to be found in that space?
Galatians 2:16 “by the faith of Christ”…it is his faith not or own that justifies us before Abba. It’s all Him, so little we can do but trust in that.
You wrote “Trusting reality for real information” these words moved my heart joyfully. Over the years this “real information” exposed my assumptions and judgments … I’m so much better for it.
Skip, I continue to pray for you and your family as the chaos will eventually be resolved! I am sure that most of us who have put some years into this life know, in large part, what you are going through. It is surely not a fun ride and it will not be totally complete anytime soon. Since we are all in this together, it makes sense to remember each other collectively and know that, hopefully, we will come to the realization that our purpose is to serve Yah the best we can.
Following His Instructions for Life ultimately is the best choice we need to make in all cases. I continue to believe in the promises of Yah to His Servants and know that all things will work out to His Glory for those of us who believe and obey HIm.
Shalom,
Truett
You mentioned something in the first part of the today’s word. You said that “when we walk through the valley“. Psalm 23. What flashed through my mind was the birth canal. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death, is similar in some ways to the birth canal/birthing. Despite this huge shift out into a new world there is in a real way a sense of death, dying to the previous moving into the new. Every time we move into something new, we die to the old. The pain and discomfort of growth and change. Also I was reminded of Isaiah 43:2 when he talks about passing “through” the waters. It is not a permanent situation but rather a movement into the new. This experience usually does elicit a certain degree of fear depending upon our experience with change and with who God is for us. The more we know him the less impact fear has on us! ( this is not to minimize the affect that fear can have on us!). Our love relationship with God is becoming more complete. We’ve been through these things and he has remained faithful, despite the messiness of the birth canal! The earth groaning and travailing! We have to remember and trust that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever!
Shalom to all of this family today.
“about passing ‘through’ the waters”… the waters “break”, separate, and the birthing process begins. WOW! Thank you, Larry!
Larry! What a picture! You know, this is something I’ve been mulling over….. Our Creator Who keeps us in a womb-like existence as was the chaotic world before He created…. that connects dots for me Brother! Thanks! Then, Leslee with her water-breaking comment! I’m verklempt!
I hope your hope is well placed because I’m in the same boat. We like boats with steering wheels. God seems to like arks. As I think about you bobbing around in a sea of chaos, I feel much empathy for you and yours. I still feel fear in the valley of the shadow of death too. I will pray this for you: I know Skip believes. Please help his unbelief.
Those are the questions I ask myself over and over again. I can’t seem to believe the answers I get from the church, and there are times I’m not even sure I fully believe what read. I wonder if it’s just the idealized views of the author, or if it’s really truth. I WANT to believe, I WANT to trust, I WANT to stop wondering if He is who I always was taught to believe He is. But the digging and discovery and realization that so much of what I always thought was true about the Bible has been twisted and tweaked to say what the early church scribes wanted it to say have shaken my very, most basic beliefs about God. I miss the days when I felt like I was walking in fellowship with God and where I truly believed in His power, sovereignty, and care. Where His promises were things I held onto with conviction, and where I didn’t live in such a state of uncertainty. Some days I wish I’d never started down this path of examination and uncovering.
Does God desire what’s best for me? Do I really think that He is for me?
Is He really good? Would He ever harm me? Will he ever abandon me?
Am I able to trust Him just for this minute? Does He care about me right now?
I don’t know the answer to these questions anymore. I don’t know what to believe or trust when the very words were written for a different people in a very different time and then manipulated through the long years. And yet I hope. I keep hoping that one day I’ll have some level of understanding – enough to answer some of those questions. Or some strength to believe again even when I am not sure. Until then I cling to the few times when I’ve felt His presence and seen His hand move. Hoping and praying that those were true and not me seeing what I wanted to see.
My gosh, Amanda, you just wrote down the burst in the bubble of innocence. We were all so naive, but perhaps it was supposed to be like that, because now we know we can never go back. We have been thrust from the Garden and the world is frightening and uncontrollable. How nice it was to live in the well-protected shelter of theological answers to everything. And how fake! Didn’t we always know there was something else, gnawing at us, pushing us to look deeper while we ran away from the possibility of being wrong about things? I too long for those old days of uncomprehending bliss. But then I would have to live in a monastery – Oh, no, I would rather be in a convent. 🙂
LOL! That made me laugh out loud! 🙂
As much as it aches, and as much as I chafe at the unknowing. I’m thankful for being awake. I’m thankful for you for encouraging me to keep going and keep searching, and for allowing me to journey with you. I’m thankful that I’m not alone in the searching and seeking. And I’m very, very slowly (mostly) learning to let it go and stop trying to have all the answers. This has definitely been the year for that!
(Also, thanks for the update on how things are going for you and Rosanne! We miss you in this neck of the woods. 🙂 )