So much easier when this sits in trust, gathering interest, but not requiring withdrawals and investments…nice on a refrigerator magnet - hard to live.

WHO DO I TRUST WITH MY VALUABLES?

Trust - like faith and belief, but more stark…requiring relinquishment…insinuation that are beyond our own resources and must rely on another.

In the Lord - yes, of course, trust in God - big, strong, good. But this is hard - we can't see Him. So we rely on the evidences available. For me - those early moments - the undeniable encounters; divine appointments, football game, basketball game, Sue's eye. I call these miracles - they reinforce the other evidence - the Word - the unfolding story. The daily drama of God's unfolding goodness in nature "The Whole Show."

You? I hope you have enough real evidence to grant reassurance that God is worthy of trust. It's not just hard because we can't see him. It's also hard because we don't always like the program.

With all your heart. These all your heart verses are tough - they remind us that we're not there yet. Like Jesus saying, "Be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect." Aargh! But isn't that the game - growing into this faith that has claimed us? I'm a holdout…there are always degrees and percentages that I cling to, to my own discredit and my own harm.

Lean not on your own understanding. Of course God gave us brains to think and process and learn and project. But in the cartoon called life, our ideas and understandings are like the bubbles that cartoon characters talk into - like little clouds that will hardly hold us up. We have no reality apart from the cartoonist and we're completely subject to a larger scheme.

Proverbs 28:26 "He who trusts in himself is a fool."

In all your ways acknowledge Him. That's all the artist wanted in that moment - a little honesty from that clever, smug little rabbit. If not for the artists good, for the rabbits own good. If not for God's good, certainly for ours. Smugness and cleverness don't wear well. Acknowledgement of our benefactor is an obvious, simple form of maturity. Ultimately, that's what praise and worship is - acknowledging our benefactor, which is good and right - for Him and for us (though He is not needy like we are). Only the smug and clever dislike worship, or grow weary of the simple acknowledgement that the one who drew us can also rub us out.

And he will make your path straight.

Job 38:1-12 Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angles shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.' Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?" God never says why. Only, do you realize who you're talking to?

A Prayer of Relinquishment

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you.

May your will be my delight today.

May your way have perfect sway in me.

May your love be the pattern of my living.

I surrender to you

my hopes,

my dreams,

my ambitions.

Do with them what you will, when you will, as you will.

I place into your loving care

my family,

my friends,

my future.

Care for them with a care that I can never give.

I release into your hands

my need to control,

my craving for status,

my fear of obscurity.

Eradicate the evil, purify the good, and establish your kingdom on earth.

For Jesus' sake,

Amen

By David Foster