Trust

This is perfect. Just perfect. By the time you read this, it will likely be mid-to-late January 2025, and you will have already failed at most, if not all, of your New Year’s resolutions, and are ready to think more seriously about the year stretching out in front of us.

I just preached a sermon on Deuteronomy 11 to start the year.  It was good to spend some time remembering Moses and the Israelites poised at the edge of a new day, at the border of the Promised Land near the Jordan River. Behind them are the 400 years of slavery in Egypt. Behind them are 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. Even though Moses won’t see the new day to completion, he sees it coming. And even as he is training up Joshua to lead them to Jericho, he takes one last opportunity (most of Deuteronomy) to preach a sermon of reminders to the people.

Among many other points Moses makes, he wants the people to know that God has been busy preparing the land for his people. Watching over it. God’s eyes are on their destination, there’s no surprise here for God. He has gone ahead of them, and his presence is already there.

“The eyes of the Lord your God are continually on the land from the beginning of the year to its end (Deuteronomy 11:12).” 

One of the best things anyone taught me when I was a young pastor was about visiting a hospital room.  I’ve now been in hundreds, I guess. But early on a mentor said “Dan, when you go to a hospital room, you may or may not know the person you are visiting. And you may or may not know if the situation is serious, life-threatening, end of life or more routine. What you will know is that Jesus is already there. He has gone before you. It’s not about you bringing Jesus to the place or person. It’s recognizing that God has already been there, and the ground is already holy because of his presence. Your job is just to listen and see what God has already been doing.”

It’s a good story, and I’ve thought back to it many times and tried to practice it. It’s not easy. It requires a deep trust, which is an extremely challenging word. We can believe all sorts of things, we can work for all sorts of things, but to put ourselves in a position of confident dependence on God showing up and acting is sometimes a huge stretch. We have to trust more in him than in ourselves.

Some years back I ran across the story of John Kavanaugh (SJ), who taught philosophy for decades at Saint Louis University.  As a young man, he went to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa, and to seek a clear answer to how he should spend the rest of his life–returning to the U.S. to become a professor, or living abroad with the poor.  On the first morning he was there, Mother Teresa asked him “What can I do for you?”  Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him, and she asked  “What shall I pray for?”  Kavanaugh thought of his wrestling over what to do with his future. “Pray that I have clarity,” he said.  Mother Teresa said firmly, “No. I will not do that.”  She said, “Clarity is the last thing that you are clinging to and you must let go of.”

It seems that Kavanaugh was a little argumentative…though I don’t know exactly how you argue with Mother Teresa!  Anyway, Kavanaugh observed out loud that SHE always seemed to have the clarity she needed.  And Mother Teresa laughed and said, “Actually, I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.  So I will pray that you trust God.”

But it’s hard, right? We already know that this year, 2025, will be filled with peaks and valleys, highs and lows, celebrations and tragedies, births and deaths. All that will happen. Will we cling to our trust in all those places?  Because if we’re honest, what we often do is proclaim our trust in God’s goodness when things are good, when we are on a mountaintop. But our first instinct from the valley floor, where things are hard or painful...is to question God’s goodness or presence or perhaps even existence.  Will we trust God that wherever we go, he has gone ahead of us?  That because of the birth, crucifixion and resurrection, we know God is trustworthy? That wherever we land, the ground is holy because of his presence?   It’s not really a New Year’s resolution...but it surely would be a good thing to remember.

Peace of Christ,

Dan Baumgartner

P.S.  Even as I write this column on trust, I’m texting and emailing with many friends in the LA area and Hollywood Pres who are evacuating or whose families have lost homes or businesses.

Here it is: faith meets real life. Lord, have mercy.

Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and formerly served as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.