12th Sunday Ordinary Time (B) 23 June 2024 Trust
There are bridges where you can see through the surface you are walking on, and see the drop below. It is intimidating. Like walking on air.
To be afraid at that point is not logical, insofar as we know that this pathway is as solid as any other, but it does not look safe.
So, in our faith we are asked to believe in things we have not yet seen, or cannot ever see, or fully understand.
With God we can use a certain amount of logic, such that we know He will not let us down; yet we have more trust for a bus driver or a dentist or cook than we have in God. This is because the people we deal with have only one task at a time, and it is within our normal range of understanding.
With God there is more mystery. But also a lot more reliability.
If we all just got up and followed Jesus what a difference! But because we want to check and re-examine and look at it from different angles we don’t make much progress.
How can we increase our trust of God? How shake off that doubt and hesitancy?
A lot of it is ‘just do it’ and it will fall into place. Live like you trust God and you will find the trust is justified.
Even God's existence we might question. Just act as though it is true and we will find that it is. Cf Peter walking on water (Mt14.22-33). What made it possible for him to do that was that he was for a time focused on Our Lord.
It is hard to have more faith than the people around us, yet this is what we are called to achieve.
We are told to believe in a life without end, of great happiness, of things way beyond what we have seen so far.
Just because something is hard to understand does not mean it is untrue.
Who made the world? If God can put the world in place could He not raise one dead body, or indeed all bodies? God can do whatever He likes, in His time and His way.
We need a personal encounter, to build up our trust in the personal reliability of God. We trust Him for who and what He is, not for how things look.
Would Jesus trick us, lie to us? Would he sell us a faulty used car?
Instead, go with it and see what happens. Most times we won’t be asked to do anything overly difficult.
A lot of it is just basic attention to detail, getting the little things right. If we are asked to do something really difficult we will have had some preparation beforehand.
Jesus will carry us across the chasm of doubt and fear, and we end up with a triumph of faith over doubt, and life over death.
If we don’t believe the contents of our own creed we are on the way to believing it, or recovering belief.
We should get better each week than the one before. Well, over time we can improve; and a lot faster if we follow this basic idea that our trust is in Him, God made Man.
God gives us not only whatever we need, but most important of all, the ability to trust Him at all times, that ability itself being a gift.
So we say, without panic, Wake up, Lord, and bring us safely to the other side.
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