Good morning…
First Peter 2:23 sticks with me most constantly from this first week of Lenten blog posts. When [Jesus] was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.
Many times in our lives stressful storms come our way, and often we cast blame for our pain on the people nearby. We want justice. We want apology. We want to even the scales, to give them a taste of life’s sour medicine. If we feel bad, shouldn’t others feel bad too? When we suffer, will we raise our voice spewing angry threats, wounding out of our own wounded-ness, projecting onto others our undeserved pain? Or will we follow in Jesus’ footsteps when life is excruciatingly unfair, unjust, uncertain? Will we entrust our cause to the God who sees, knows, and understands every single ounce of us? When we feel reviled by life, is it enough that God sees our pain, God takes up our cause, God remembers our misery and takes in our tears?
To entrust means to put something into someone’s care or protection, to invest with responsibility, to delegate an important duty based on trust. To assign or allocate. To commit or confide. To hand off or turn over. Are we willing to surrender into the safekeeping of the Almighty God our hardened hurts and our deepest disappointments? It is difficult to do, to humbly entrust our vulnerable selves to the God who sees everything and responds from a wider will, more expansive than our own. Sometimes slowly. Seemingly senselessly. Beyond our control and our comprehension, God’s will gradually takes form within and around us.
It is hard to entrust our whole selves to the care and protection of our invisible, mysterious God, but when things go awry, when worse brings more worse, when push brings shove and shove brings more suffering, we run into the hardest word in this Bible passage. Jesus continued. Jesus continued entrusting himself. Jesus continued entrusting himself to the God who judges justly, for His hidden higher purposes.
As we savor this first Sabbath in the season of Lent, will we continue entrusting our whole self to God’s quiet care?
Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us (2 Timothy 1:14, NIV).
…Sue…
