How to Be Trusting and to Be Trustworthy

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

GOD himself tells us how that is going to be. “Cursed be the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord,” he said in the Book of Jeremiah. (17,5) And he continues: “Blessed be the man that trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his confidence.” (17,7)

No amount of human power, no matter how formidable, if not animated by the power of God, can stand the test of time with all the different conditions, challenges and trials we are going to meet in life. It would just be a matter of time before failure, in all its forms, can take place. Only God can assure us of victory, because he can even draw life from death, the worst failure we can have.

With all the things that we have to contend with in this life, we certainly need to have a healthy sense of trust in God’s loving and wise providence, abandoning ourselves in his will and ways that often are mysterious to us and can appear to be contrary to what we would like to have.

Especially in our dark and difficult moments, which these days are not anymore uncommon, when we feel so miserable that we can think that we have been deserted by God, we need to react immediately and reassure ourselves strongly that God never fails us.

It might be a good idea to rally the power of our faith that tells us that God takes care of everything. There is really nothing to worry even if we are made to suffer, since that suffering, if united to that of Christ, becomes something purifying and redemptive not only to oneself but also to everybody else.

It might be a good idea to come up with the different arguments of our faith to buoy up our drooping spirit that is weighed down by our many challenges in this life. God is a God of mercy and compassion. He, more than us, will take up all our suffering by bearing them himself—of course, together with us.

Precisely God sent the Son to us to save us. And this Son, Jesus Christ, perfected his redemptive work on us by assuming all our sins through his passion and death on the cross. He conquered sin and death and gave us the possibility of eternal life of bliss with God in heaven through his resurrection.

The merits of this redemptive work of Christ are made effective all throughout time through the mechanism of the sacramental economy that is provided by the Church.

Christ himself has told us that while troubles would unavoidably come our way in this life, we should not worry too much because he has overcome whatever troubles we may have. (cfr. Jn 16,33)

We should just make our faith strong and operative because that is how we can start and maintain our life to be a life with God as it should be. With faith, we start to share God’s knowledge of things and his power, and that is how our life should be since we are God’s image and likeness, meant to share in the very life of God.

When everything in our life is lived with Christ and for Christ, that’s when we can manage to be trusting of men who can never be perfectly trustworthy. Our trustworthiness can go only so far as our identification with Christ goes.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com