I recently had the occasion to eat at two restaurants in one day.
That highly-unusual happening got me pondering an old line from a years-ago comedian, Flip Wilson: “What you see is what you get!”
Our lunch restaurant embodied that fully. Colorful buffet salad fixings allowed diners to partake of what they chose. A further buffet of eight soups, two kinds of muffins, three kinds of pasta and breads rounded out the dining possibilities. Dessert options included self-serve ice cream, brownies and two kinds of fresh fruit. We could read descriptions and rely on what our eyes and noses took in to make our choices.
Our evening restaurant’s menu made our mouths water and our taste buds struggle to rest on just one choice. What was delivered to our table, however, was very disappointing. In particular, a vegetable garden pasta could have benefited from a side of magnifying glass to track down the few, tiny bits of vegetables.
The two extremes made me yet again regret the preponderance in our society of fancy talk with little substance. Not to mention virtuous speech followed by actions where the amount of virtue is as teeny as the vegetable bits in the pasta mentioned above.
We are counseled to determine the good person from the bad by their actions, not their rhetoric. But sometimes what we hear seems to make sense, and we don’t have access to reliable knowledge about a given person’s fruits. And so we may be misled at times by evil-hearted people in society.
Another, more personal, dilemma can surface if we discover that persons we’ve considered to be friends or friendly acquaintances are deeply focused on their own well-being to the exclusion of the welfare of others. In good times, we can hang around for a long time with such people and not realize they are quite willing to stab us in the back if they will benefit. Support in difficult times and sincere happiness over a friend’s good fortune is lacking. Otherwise-hidden indifference or jealousy reigns within them instead.
Even those without such a lack of goodwill, who strive to follow God and to become generous on behalf of others, will have bad moments. Life challenges may mean they simply feel they cannot help someone desperate for their assistance or friendly ear. Saintly people are often capable of throwing their important agendas aside to assist another — but even they, while here on earth, cannot be perfect in that effort.
The bottom line is that we really do have to put our trust in God above and beyond any reliance on people — perhaps especially over relying on ourselves.
A reading from Jeremiah, chapter 17, hits it on the head. It describes the person who does not put his trust in God as “like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth.”
The prophet calls “blessed” those who trust in the Lord and “whose hope is in the Lord.” They are not as a barren bush, but are instead “like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream.”
I’ve come to the realization that God allows us to be let down or even substantially hurt by other human beings in order to push us to place our trust in Him, first and foremost. Those whom we observe as being trustworthy might well be worthy of our trust, but not our wholehearted trust.
There’s a difference.
Our wholehearted trust in God will sustain us when others show themselves to be mere human beings. Whether we bump into truly evil people or merely must rally ourselves after somewhat minor letdowns, God is the rock who saves us. If we wisely fear that our own perceptions are limited, we’ll learn that God is the one whose perspective is complete.
As Jeremiah says, “the Lord alone probe(s) the mind and test(s) the heart … .”
God knows who tells us the truth and who is deceitful. He knows who will seek to harm us before they begin to plot how to do so. Acquaintances, friends, family and our own selves can, and do, fail others’ trust at times.
But God not only wants to save us, He is able to do so. Let’s put our trust in Him.