Trust

Trust is something hard to come by and almost impossible to regain. It is taking a flying leap into someone's arms. Hoping that their honesty and integrity are solid enough to catch your trust in them. When they let you fall, it is hard to try again. You remember the pain too well.

I thank Christ Jesus our Lord that he has trusted me and has appointed me to do his work with the strength he has given me. 1Timothy 1:12


Paul's persecution of the Jews in his earlier life was something many folks could not get over. I think I would personally have had trouble meeting with him, much less accepting him into my group. I think "trust" was the one thing he was ever grateful to Christ Jesus for extending to him. If anyone deserved "not" to be given a chance, it was Paul. If there was anyone less likely to trust, it was Paul. Yet Christ Jesus put not only His trust but the lives of early Christians and the church in his bloodstained hands. Wow!

But the second part of the statement is what blows me away. "He has appointed me to do his work with the strength he has given me". I think it would be better said, "And I have finally realized that the job He has given me can be only done in his strength"

In our lives, it is not always that we are too weak to do the task. I think sometimes we are too strong. We take the fragile balance of life and we tip it over. We take the delicacy of human relationships and we stomp them. We take the china parlor of His love and like a bull charge through destroying all in our way. Sometimes the things we do are more a stumbling block "in the way" of what He means for us to do.

In the name of God? I wonder.