Sunday, June 20, 2010

Trust

Trust is something I've been musing over for the last few months, particularly with respect to money.
A few weeks ago I had some money go missing from my purse. After my inital reaction (panic) I started to think about how much money affects me, about how closely I guard my finances, how I worry about every penny I possess, spend, save, use. God has commanded us to look well after the things we have, but I found myself wondering if it's possible to look too carefully after them, whether by holding too tightly on to them we lose something greater.
Lay not up for yourselves storehouses of grain, that's what Jesus said. Instead, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I worry quite a bit about the practicalities of going to London. I worry that I will have trouble finding work and accommodation and occasionaly picture myself after a few short weeks, on the streets, in the cold, begging for coins from passers by. Even though I have never been in lack, even though I have lived in constant luxury, the richness of my life has not led me to develop a sense of security in God.
Perhaps this is because I have always had a backup - my parents. And now, for the first time in my life, God will be my only backup. God for who the entire world is his resource.
If I believe that God is going with me to London, maybe I need to step away from my attitude of careful, calculating wariness. In Christian circles we have come to use the word 'faith' so often that it can sometimes seem a little meaningless, but what it means to me, what I see it representing, is a life lived with an attitude of reckless abandon.
Because maybe it is possible to be both realistic AND optimistic. Maybe that's even the best way to be - to recognise the difficulties, but to have such utter confidence in God that those difficulties are not barriers.
Was it merely coincidental that Esther became the king's wife? Or that the Samaritan woman came to the well as Jesus was seated there? Was it by chance that the man placed on the cross next to Jesus was a thief searching for a treasure greater than all he had stolen? When Paul traveled to the churches through Asia Minor, he did not wait for confirmation that he would always have a place to stay and food to eat. He went. He trusted. And God provided.
Abraham drew a line in the sand. He decided to obey God no matter what command he was given - 'becauses he considered him faithful who had promised' (Hebrews 11.11).
This is both the most basic requirement and the ultimate challenge. Do I consider God faithful?
Well. Do I?

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Next Month

It's the first day in June. Next month I move to London. Next month! And who knows what life changes that will bring with it?
London seems like the summation of possibility. It's exciting and a little bit scary not knowing where I'll be, who I'll be with, what sort of person it may all change me into.
It's a strange kind of funny that in the past when I'm panicking and struggling and unhappy I've dreamt of running away, of escaping my life and all of it's pressures. I've dreamt of leaving behind the things, the people even, who make me feel I'm living in a pressure cooker, who suffocate me.
Even though it's me, it's all me, suffocating myself.
And now I'm really running away - but it's not how I always envisaged. Because I'm not panicking, struggling or unhappy. I'm making this very deliberate life change with hope in my heart as well as the fear. And I'm not escaping, not from my life, not from the people I'm leaving behind me. They are the ones who I hold close. I've written about this already I know. But how could I ever imagine that the action of leaving them behind would be to free myself? They are the ones who make me free.
And it's them that make me free to go not the other way around.