“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Sound familiar? Some folks would call that the motto of the United States Postal Service, although they don’t actually have a motto. That statement is actually an inscription on the main post office building in New York City. But it suits the post office pretty well.
I’m something of a recluse so I do a lot of my shopping over the internet and have it shipped to my house. So I rely on the mail a lot, and I don’t know how the mail works where you live, but where I live it’s sometimes daunting to deliver. But I can honestly say that my mail has never been stopped because of weather. And that’s saying something in Kansas.
The post office hasn’t ever really let me down, so I have a lot of confidence in them.
Mailbox - Safe Haven Farm, Haven, KS
Today’s verse is Psalm 57:7.
My heart is confident in you, O God; my heart is confident. No wonder I can sing your praises!
When you have confidence in someone or something, that means you trust them. Not just on the surface but you trust them implicitly to do what they have promised to do.
What do you have confidence in? As I just said, I trust the post office to deliver my mail. I also trust chairs to support my weight. I trust my car to start when I turn the key. I trust my roof not to leak when it rains. I trust gravity to hold everyone close to the planet. I trust the sun to come up in the morning and go down at night. I don’t trust the moon because I can’t ever figure out where it’s going to be from evening to evening, no matter how many astronomy courses I’ve taken.
It’s easy to have confidence in a chair or a car or the sun. We witness these things every day, performing the same tasks over and over again until we take it for granted that they will always function the same way. It’s easy to have confidence in the post office because they’ve never done me wrong. They usually exceed my expectations, actually.
It’s easy to have confidence in things you can see. So is it possible to have confidence in God, like this verse says?
It’s ironic to me that this is one of the songs that David wrote when he was on the run from King Saul, who was trying to kill him. Basically, David was on the run, hiding in caves, sneaking around, trying to survive, trusting God for everything because he was dead otherwise. You would think he would write a Psalm asking God why he had to go through something like this? After all, David was innocent. Saul was just trying to kill him out of insecurity and jealousy. David hadn’t done anything to deserve death. All he’d done was what God had told him to do. So in one perspective, God’s the one who got David into the situation in the first place. So how can David say that he has confidence in God?
When I order something online, I trust the post office to deliver it. I can’t see their processes. I can’t see the trouble they go to get to my package to me on time. I can’t see the difficulties they encounter. All I know is that I put my order in, and then a week later (usually less) I get my package in the mail. That’s the way it works. And they’ve come through for me enough times that I don’t have a problem trusting them.
That has been my experience with God. I ask Him for something, but even though I don’t always get an answer right away, eventually I get an answer. It may not be the one I want, but I just have to remind myself that God has a perspective that I don’t have. He wants to do good things for me. He wants to help me. And He has come through for me in so many other instances that I don’t have a problem trusting that He has my best interests in mind.
God is always working, always busy, always up to something. Most of the time, I can’t keep up. I just have to hold on and enjoy the ride. And there are times when I really don’t understand what God wants me to do. But in those times, I still have a choice. I can either keep going or I stop trusting Him and trust someone else.
We always have that choice. God doesn’t force us to trust Him. God doesn’t force us to do anything.
So when it comes down to choosing to trust Him or choosing not to, it really is up to us. But you have to ask yourself, if you don’t trust God, who are you going to trust? Yourself? I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust myself at all. I’ve let myself down so many times. I’m lacking in so many areas that trusting myself with the major decisions in my life is a really bad idea. But as little as trust myself, I trust other people even less. I know that makes me sound like a terrible person, but it’s true.
I don’t trust people. I don’t trust me. So who is left?
Always Peachy 