Trust

To what response does God look for from us In return for the gift of His love that knows no Boundary, limit or breaking point? The splendor of the human heart That trusts it is loved unconditionally Gives God more pleasure Than Westminster Cathedral The Sistine Chapel Beethoven's ninth symphony Van Gogh's sunflowers The sight of ten thousand butterflies in flight Or the scent of a million orchids in bloom Why is trust such a rare and priceless treasure? Because it often demands a degree of courage That borders on the heroic When the shadow of Jesus' cross falls across our lives In its form of rejection, abandonment, loneliness, failure Unemployment, loss of income, depression When the world around us Is suddenly a hostile and a menacing place When we are deaf To everything but the shriek of our own heartache We may cry out in anguish "But how could a loving God permit that to happen?" At that moment the seed of distrust is sown I am now utterly convinced That childlike surrender in trust Is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship And I would add That the supreme need in most of our lives Is an unshaken, unfailing trust in the love of God It's the remedy For so much of our fear, and our anxiety, our melancholy Our self-hatred and our sickness The heart converted from mistrust to trust In the irreversible forgiveness Is redeemed from the corrosive power of fear The existential dread That salvation is reserved for the proper and the pious The nameless fear that I'm predestined to backslide The brooding pessimism that The good news of God's wild, passionate Orchestrally called, the Furious Love of God Is simply too good to be true All these things combine to weave A thin membrane of distrust That keep us in a chronic state of anxiety The best definition of faith is Faith is the courage to accept acceptance Of me as I am With all of my warts, flaws With all my selfishness, dishonesty, degraded love Right now with all of my shallow faith My inconsistent discipleship Jesus loves me and accepts me as I am And not as I should be Because I'm never going to be as I should be Is Your heart overflowing with compassion Because they feel exiled from You? Do You see their entire lives right now As a cry of longing? A prayer of heartfelt longing? Longing for You alone And the moment they call Your name Will you sweep them up into Your arms and embrace them? God is forever loving you And there is nothing you can do To increase his love for you Nothing you can do to diminish it If God stopped thinking of you He would cease to exist Fear is useless What is needed is trust Everyone keeps telling me I look smaller now My dad is proud of me He says he's seen me grow into a man The truth is I'm fading away Twenty-five pounds of flesh and blood Prune the limbs Break them down again Growth requires decay The Spring requires the cold Life requires a death Trust is all I have left I am afraid my life doesn't mean anything When I die I'll fade out in the night Just another faceless name Ashes to dust what does it matter If I die old in my sleep or young with cancer? I want you to be real so bad I want you to be real so bad Oh I've just worked so hard And now I'm weeping in the arms of my wife What is this grief? Is it the loss of a simple faith? Or have I come to see the depths of my idolatry? Can't lift the veil Or balance the scales Growth requires decay The Spring requires the cold Life requires a death Trust is all I have left Oh can it be that there's someone that loves me? That the ache that I feel When I look up at the night Is you pressing down on me? Grace, Trust, Rest, Peace Aging gracefully All I am is dust to dust All I need is ruthless trust Trust