Your road in life will always be straight - 5 September 2023

To trust a person or even an object asks from us a certain attitude, without which, life would be impossible. In business deals, marriage, team sports, your workplace, etc., life would be unbearable if you cannot trust others. We even have to put our trust in things like our car, for how would one start a long journey without such trust? To just hope for the best, will never work.

We all know, however, that at any time we can be left in the lurch by someone or something. Your business partner may cheat you or your car may break down in the most inappropriate place. In our daily lives, it is, unfortunately, always possible that we might be disappointed in someone or something we trusted. Psychologists find that many people come to them for help, because their trust has been broken too many times, by too many people. In spite of this, we do not have much of a choice but to put our hope and trust in people, and objects.

There is one, our proverb tells us, who will never leave you in the lurch, one in whom you can put all your trust without fail, but there is a very important condition: “trust in the LORD with all your heart”. The words of Deuteronomy 6:5 spring to mind: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

In spite of this, I have listened to many people who say the Lord has disappointed them and left them in the lurch. We find the answer in the second part of the proverb: “Never rely on what you think you know.” The word that is translated here as “rely” is translated in the King James Bible as “lean on”, in the sense of leaning on a walking-stick or staff for support. People who only lean on their own knowledge will be disappointed, not by God, but by the unstable “walking-stick” of their own insight, an insight in which we so dearly love to trust.

Those who trust in the Lord will find that he will show them the way and that their road will always be a straight one.

Prayer: Thank you that I can always be sure that my trust in you will never be broken and that you will never disappoint me.