The Texture of Trust

"My son, do not forget my teaching,

but let your heart keep my commandments,

for length of days and years of life

and peace they will add to you.

Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you;

bind them around your neck;

write them on the tablet of your heart.

So you will find favor and good success

in the sight of God and man.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,

and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make straight your paths.

Be not wise in your own eyes;

fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.

It will be healing to your flesh

and refreshment to your bones." -  (Proverbs 3:1-8, ESV )

It is a significant experience when something you have always affirmed, or claimed to have understood and believed, moves from the realm of intellectual assent - the hypothetical/theoretical - and into the realm of the tactile, the tangible and visceral. Indeed, it is a difficult experience to describe, because it is not that your thinking has changed - in that, it is not that you now disagree with that which you once agreed - but that your experience of this very same thought or sentiment has been entirely transformed, often in the space of a moment. I imagine it would be much that same as witnessing a two dimensional map leap from the realm of muted printwork colors, contour lines and scaled dimensions on the table before you to become a living landscape all about you - mountains and valleys, forests and rivers - suddenly alive with sound and scent and feeling; a landscape to be trod upon and explored, not merely appreciated from a safe and sterile distance.

Growing up as a kid from a church-going family, Proverbs 3:5-6 is one of those short, memorizable passages that has rolled around in my head for just about as long as I can remember. As a bit of phrase it has that bouncing, easy cadence well suited to memory exercises. And, given that these words pop easily to mind some decades later, those exercises apparently accomplished their aim. (A thousand under-appreciated Sunday school teachers rejoice.)  

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart..." It has a ring to it, doesn't it? It has that feeling of truth and solidity that sticks with you. It's a nugget worth encouraging our children to memorize. But in the end to speak about trust - to memorize some well-crafted proverbial sentiments about it, and even to wholeheartedly desire that our proclamations and confessions of trust would be genuine and true - is not the same thing as experiencing trust: the reality of a living, breathing journey of outright, unmitigated dependance. And as with most things of value, experience of this sort only comes with time, and with risk.

In this season of transition, I am faced with the distinct impression that my understanding of "trust" is leaping from the table to the landscape, as it were; taking on new dimensions, colors, scents and sounds. This past Sunday was my last as a member of the pastoral staff at Dover Baptist, as Becca and I step out with our family into this vision and call that God has placed on our lives to pursue planting a new community of disciples in a neighboring city. The path before us, while clear in conviction and ripe with potential in many directions, is at best loosely defined when it comes to tangible details at this point. And suddenly, as we come to the moment of departure, it is the details of life that loom large. 

You suddenly remember how nice a salaried position has been; maybe you weren't living large, but there's just something existentially reassuring about money that reliably appears in your checking account every week. Especially when it's January and your alternative means of feeding your family consists of a carpentry trade specializing in framing and roofing - that is to say, outdoor work - and we're on track for one of the snowiest, coldest winters in recent memory. Let's just say it's difficult to finish out a roofing project when you lose two days out of every working week to weather, and two hours out of every working day to shoveling the aftermath of said weather. And this is not a complaint - it is entirely providential that I have any other means of feeding my family at all - but simply a statement of fact that the details of life seem suddenly more tenuous and complex than they have for a number of years. There's the question of housing  - when/where to move, to rent (more expensive, month to month, less commitment and debt), to buy (more affordable, month to month, infinitely more commitment and debt) - and managing vehicle repairs, etc. etc. etc. And all of this only constitutes the mere undercurrent and simple logistics of the much larger question of what, exactly, it is that I think I'm doing, leaving an established church and a steady job for the sake of pursuing a pastoral position that doesn't exist quite yet. 

It's safe to say that twinges of doubt and a quiet-but-persistent, low-grade sense of insecurity are just part of my life right now. The puzzled look that comes across most people's faces when you try to explain what it is you're setting out to do doesn't really help. But in the end, risk is risk, and that feeling is just part of the experience. When you think about it, things like skydiving and rock climbing probably wouldn't be as popular as they are if jumping out of a plane produced the same feeling as sitting on your living room couch. There's just something in our bodies that knows and responds when we move from a place of relative safety to a place of risk; some people engage intentional and artificial risks (like jumping out of a perfectly good airplane or scaling a vertical rock face that wasn't standing between you and some important destination) for the sake of simulating that experience. Other times, we are moved to embrace risk because it is the necessary path to something of greater value. In the end, most things of real value entail engaging some semblance of real risk: 'value' and 'cost' are sisters,  and these are costly endeavors.

Which brings us back to trust.

I found myself pondering all of this yesterday, as those words from Proverbs chapter 3 sprung to mind. I realized at some visceral level that through this season I am being drawn into an experience of trust in an entirely new dimension. It's easy to claim faith and trust in the Lord when all the details of life seem to be otherwise accounted for; the paycheck, the house, the security and stability of a more or less predictable day-to-day life. If asked to speak philosophically or spiritually about these things from the security of our living room couch, good Christian people would all acknowledge that, yes, ultimately all this provision and blessing comes to us at the hand of Lord. But immediately, what we are really trusting in and relying upon is our own competency, our work ethic and responsibility, our common sense, our employer. And that is not to say these avenues of blessing are somehow contrary to one another; obviously, they are not. But there is distinct tangible, experiential difference between acknowledging on an intellectual level that all blessing, security and provision comes to us from God, and knowing, in the pit of your stomach, that if God doesn't come through, you are simply lost. 

It's hard to describe what it feels like to move from one understanding of trust to the other; it's like rolling the car window down in the middle of a January storm, and feeling that bracing, invigorating cold invade what was a warm, safe space only moments before. It's like standing in the open doorway of a small aircraft, knowing that at the count of three you are going to be hurtling towards the ground as fast as gravity can take you. When trust in the Lord becomes a living landscape around you, rather than a two dimensional concept of theory and hypothesis, you just know in your bones that you have entered an entirely new genre of life story. It's vibrant and exciting; this is a taste of what Jesus would call "life, to the full". It's also terrifying. But it is in that terror of experiencing genuine, visceral trust in our creator and savior God that life is opened; that we move from the walking slumber that we so often confuse for living to finally see the color, hear the music, smell the scents, taste the essence and feel the texture of this world that we have been given to live within in striking, resonating definition. 

Where this particular journey will end, I can't really say right now. All we have at the moment are the steps being laid directly before our feet, and the invitation to be faithful in those small things. I don't know what lies around the bend, or just how the Lord's provision will come in order to get us there. But I trust Him. I can do nothing else and, in the end, there is no better place in the world to be.

Lord, make straight our paths.