What happens when you trust God and he seems to make your path crooked?

I’m enjoying my morning ritual of a cup of coffee and a bit of space to reflect, read and pray.

Over the last couple of days a dawning awareness has crept over me… I’m finding it hard to trust God. There is an underlying fear that I will find that somehow I was trusting for the wrong thing, or that God will teach me a lesson by letting me suffer.

I am not talking about what I believe theologically, but what is going on in my emotional world as I sit down to have a chat to God.

I am realising that at least some of the fear stems back to what feels like a train-wreck a few years ago when it felt as though God let a bunch of stuff happen that should not have happened….. at least from my perspective.

The bible verse that has been a foundation for my life has been Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

I have a question…  what happens when you trust God and he seems to make your path crooked?

Part of the reason I am now even able to engage with this question is that over the past few months I have seen God time and again, clearly and unambiguously look after me and my family. Moving to Canada has been a huge step for us and at so many points things could have gone horribly wrong. It has taken a series of remarkable co-incidences that I can only put down to the hand of God, for me to find myself sitting here and engaging with Seminary while the kids settle into a new school.

One of my professors, Randal Rauser, has written a book that is well worth reading about the wrestle for authentic, non clichéd faith called “You’re Not as Crazy as I Think: Dialogue in a world of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions.” I enjoyed the book and found his exploration of some of the key “hot button” issues that face Christians really helpful.

I like his description of the moments where it seems God intervenes as “little amazing moments of providence” or LAMPs. He also clearly points out though that God seems to allow things to happen that by any measurement are horrible and seemingly without rational explanation.

I cannot rationally explain why God should care about helping our family while at the same time little children are dying of starvation and others are being abused. I cannot explain why sometimes in my life God has clearly cared for the smallest detail, yet at other times I have felt abandoned and alone in the face of things that seemed wrong.

I’ve been living with this dilemma for a while, and yet it has only been clear in the last few days how that has translated to an underlying fear that God would stop looking after us. Those feeling have been exacerbated by being in a different land without the securities and familiarities that surrounded us in Australia. I can seen how that fear becomes an unconscious drive to seek security and perhaps stack up a few more insurance policies in case God doesn’t come through.

I can see why it is normal, as you get older, to get more “sensible”. When I was younger I was idealistic, and tended towards being black and white, but as I get older I find the bruises of life tend to knock out the idealism of youth. Alfred North Whitehead captured something important when he wrote:

“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”

As we grow older, life happens and the things that seemed so straightforward all of a sudden become complicated, and that includes faith.

Actually faith is simple, but it is a simplicity that comes through living in a complicated world where things don’t always make sense. I have found that there are some people who are quick with an answer, but that answer is embarrassingly simplistic. Others however have lived life, and their answers sound simple but carry great depth.

I resonate with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who said

 I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

It seems to me that this is an important principle of faith.

This morning over coffee I read:

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (Mark 8:34-36)

This is one of the passages in my bible that has been underlined a few times in a few different colours. I realised afresh this morning that the life of faith means moving beyond the fear that seeks survival, to a place where you are willing to let go of that agenda. Faith means trusting that you might die, be hurt or look weak, but that in that very process God will be at work helping you discover your life that comes no other way.

The faith life doesn’t make intellectual sense, and sometimes it hurts.

God cannot be predicted. He does not operate from a set of rules that can be followed in order to have a happy and prosperous life.

Faith means being willing to step out despite the fear, and despite the fact that you may fall, but trusting that even if you do fall, the outcome will be life and not death.