Our Trustworthy Friend

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

 

 

 

When I tell people some of the things I survived while in Navy boot camp, they can hardly believe their ears. What stress and strain compared to how I live now days. Getting up at 4:00am to run as a group; standing for hours in the hot sun; experiencing the gas chamber, a building on fire, and attention to detail to the nth degree. But I am speaking of my own personal experience. I was there.

It may be a little harder for them to fathom a recollection I tell concerning my grandparents. How they came across the ocean in a small boat and sharks circled them and there wasn’t enough food. But my grandma wrote it all down. So people who know me, trust me, and are simply amazed over such a story.

If I go farther back in my genealogy, I can probably pull up more stories, and by modern technology even dig up some documents for support. But at some point, what I hear has happened in my family needs to be taken at face value. I may need to believe without seeing. I may need to believe the ancestor who believed the ancestor who told the story of the one who experienced it. Faith and trust play a bigger role because I have no real eye-witness evidence. Nor do I have a tangible relationship to rely on.

As adults, we would like to think that with enough evidence and plausible factual support, we’re capable of understanding anything. And especially when it comes to God-questions.  Why do people suffer? Why do people die when they do? But the truth is, there is plenty of stuff I don’t understand even after being taught. One example: I can’t get my head around math in its various forms. But I believe the teacher understands it. What’s Greek to me the teacher fully understands. Must we experience / eye witness in order to fully accept its existence as truth?

 

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My way,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

God is all-wise and all-knowing, meaning there is some stuff He knows that we will never get our head around. Are you okay with that? Can we trust that the Loving God we trust with other things has His hand on all things, including the inconceivable? Yes. Yes! When we have a relationship with Him, we can trust the Lord in all things. He is bigger, better, greater beyond our wildest imagination. We can stand in faith and live secure and at peace in that knowledge. Turn our eyes and our heart to the God Who is great in knowledge and great in love – even in the things we do not understand. We can believe, have faith and good, certain hope in that which we do not see. For He is our trustworthy Friend.