that which is easy, that which is trust

Monday morning I sat in my office in my teacher clothes, but not teaching.  Instability rocks the island, people are afraid. Public transportation is either striking or hiding, probably some of both, making it impossible for most of our staff and students to come.

So I sat in my office instead and prayed and worked on my sermon for Friday's chapel, growing from a passage I was studying in my daily devotions last week, Jeremiah 17, growing from my experience in the street a week ago with the flying rocks.

Thankful for some unexpected quiet hours to study and prepare, I looked at the two paths of trust Jeremiah 17 outlines: Trust in Man, or Trust in God.

Apparently we can't build our trust on both, since verse 5 talks about those who rely on human strength having turned their hearts away from the Lord.

Those who trust in man, Jeremiah shows us, live in a barren wilderness, look like stunted shrubs in the desert.

Not only will trusting in man, including trusting in myself, fail us every time (experience alone shows us that is true), but trusting in man also plunges us into survival mode.  It takes all our energy, and with only the little water man can give, we become stunted and dry and exhausted.

We have no extra water to even think about bearing fruit, no extra water to flourish and offer shelter or nourishment to others.  We can't possibly posses the qualities that bless others when our trust is in man, our interactions with others cannot bless them, strengthen them, or encourage them.

Worse yet, we can't receive from Him because when we're spreading our roots of trust into the wells of man, we can't receive what only HE is offering.  We're living on man's shallow resources, missing out on His blessings of peace, of contentment.  Wisdom, hope and joy...missing out on His blessings of HIMSELF.

Dry and weary we are indeed, useless and always thirsty, offering little and driven by every wave life throws us.

But, says Jeremiah further, when we trust in the Lord, we have a secret life. A secret source. A deep well that never runs dry, a flowing of fresh water within that drought and heat cannot touch.

We have deep roots and are not easily shaken.

Don't get me wrong...the sun will still scorch our leaves, the drought will still touch us.  But we are unharmed, because our deeply hidden roots are still saturated in Him.  We can stay green and flourish despite our circumstances, we can enjoy Him and not be damaged by life's many storms.

We produce fruit when we trust in Him, and we possess the qualities of Christ that DO bless others...people can find shelter in us during their storms, they can find nourishment.  Our effort is not consumed by survival, so our effort can be in fruit-bearing.

Best, when our trust is tapped into Christ, we have HIS blessings pouring in and through us.  His hope.  His confidence that cannot be shaken. We have HIM, and He is bottomless.

I worked through these images yesterday, developed my thoughts, pondered through a few illustrations, including both the rocks in the road from last week and a well we had dug for church plant that seemed to have been done well, producing good water in the rainy season, but this summer in the drought started producing nothing but mud, showing that below the surface, it was not dug deeply enough.

"So, where does our trust lie?" I will finish with asking.  "Praise the Lord for difficult times that reveal where our roots are embedded...and if we're looking more like a desert shrub than a flourishing tree today, we have misplaced our trust.  Let's dig deeper.

As I wrote to the eerie silence of the street outside my office, I prayed for all our staff and students, for our dear Haiti, for the hearts of all the men and women of Emmaus to be deeply rooted in trust in Him as the country bulks over who it can trust after being manipulated, deceived, robbed and lied to so many times in so many ways...As many continue to put their trust in man, disappointed and dry and devastating, over and over.  A dry and weary land, indeed.

And as I worked through the sermon, I was praying it for myself because I've been struggling with a seed of bitterness.

A few weeks ago someone suggested to me that I couldn't understand how difficult it is for them when they can't be there for their family and friends, because we have been here a long time.  It rubbed me, it angered me, and I wasn't even sure why it secretly upset me so much.

Then AGAIN, a few days ago, in light of Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holiday season, another person noted that for new missionaries, it is very hard to be away from friends and family, because they are not used to it like we are.

I realized this time that it angered and frustrated me because they were mistaking my TRUST for my EASY.

They were mistaking my often-times VERY by-choice, very painful, often tear-soaked TRUST in the Lord--trusting Him with my heart and my family and my friends and my children and in His calling, trusting Him with my hands on His plow--for it being EASY for me to be away from friends and family.

It was gut-wrenchingly hard when I called my sister on my sweet niece's first birthday Sunday and found her, instead of celebrating with cupcakes, in the urgent care with her 2 year old, getting stitches in her lip.  It was gut-wrenchingly hard when I hear all the exhaustion in my 27-weeks-high-risk-pregnant sister's voice, because she needs a snack and a nap, not four hours in urgent care with a hungry, bleeding toddler.  So I talk and listen, and pray, and call again later, and Monday morning even found a way to send her a piece of cheesecake.

But there is nothing else I can do but trust, and so I TRUST.

I do not EASY.  I TRUST.  I choose it, I hold it, I hang my hat on it, I wake up to it and go to sleep to it and sometimes stay awake with it and He is deep water.  I TRUST because He tells me to.  I trust because He who calls is Faithful, and not just to me.

I trust, not because it is easy or convenient (when worry and self-pity volunteer their life-sucking services), but because I have wrapped all my hope and confidence up in the Living God, the Lord of Heavens Armies.  I trust because He is trustworthy, because He is deep water, because I am NOT strong.

Jayla's got stitches in her lip, my sister's 27 weeks high-risk pregnant, my father-in-law has still not met Benny-boy as he wrestles with cancer, our families are making plans to all be together without us for Thanksgiving once again, so DON'T CALL IT EASY, I yell in my brain and even then have to go to God again as I prepare to preach.

Because there is no room for trusting in man, but there is also no room for seeds of bitterness or self-pity.  My trust being misunderstood is not my problem or mine to right or justify.

The Lord knows, He is my secret place and my secret strength.  And I can trust Him with what people think.

I praise the Lord as His word helps me, I go home and make soup and love on the kids and praise the Lord for how He's provided and I pray for Haiti and I pray for our people and my people and His people and I dwell by the river that never runs dry.

And then right before bed last night, I get the international call--no, not even a call--a text...that mirrored what I planned to tell the students on Friday to be thankful for, because it causes us to evaluate wherein we lie our trust.

My little sister, just moments after I'd last been texting with her Monday evening, started bleeding and was pummeled into a traumatic, emergency c-section in Philly.

Last night my little 2.5 lb. niece was rushed into the world, unready, my sister rushed into surgery, unprepared. Last night my heart stopped and my prayers and tears poured and my phone sat black when I wanted it to somehow teleport me.

This morning, classes still cancelled, rocks still continuing to fly, flights in and out all cancelled on all airlines, this morning, I still haven't heard the voice of my sister, I stare at a photo of my tiny, tubed, perfectly formed niece, born exactly 366 days after her sister, this morning, I praise the Lord for holding both my niece and my sister in stable health and this morning...

This morning it is not easy.

Twelve years in Haiti, thirty years of following Jesus, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, in richer and poorer, it has nothing. to. do. with. easy., and neither the life of our Savior nor the words of our Lord ever once said that it would.

This morning is about Him. His streams of living water.

And if I trust Him.

And I do.