While my childhood was interesting, I don’t consider it all that different.  Of course it was unique, but only in the sense that every life is unique.  Even children of the same family, exposed to all the same events and surroundings and people will each have their own experience.

I simply mean that no one has a perfect childhood, a perfect family or neighborhood.  There is always something to dread or fear, something we really don’t like, and other things that we will remember fondly until the day we die.

When I was very young, I don’t know what I really thought about life itself. Children tend to simply try and get by the best they can, without judging the kind of life they have.  What I remember of my own experience was like that.

Later, as we get older and grow into our adulthood, we begin to notice that we are different. I think my teen years were still busy with trying to cope. But in my early adult years I had repeating bouts with pneumonia, and one year I remember having the time to look back with a more critical eye on my childhood. I suppose we all do that at some point.

The only reason I even think of it now is because I am considered by some to be an untrusting person. And it’s true, I am slow to really trust others.  My own experiences and my understanding of human nature makes me reluctant to lean too much on other people.

I don’t think that others are somehow less trustworthy than I am.  But I believe that all people are more concerned with their own lives and with their own happiness than with the lives and happiness of others.  This, to me, seems like normal human nature.

Yet we all do things for other people.  And depending on our job or station in life, we may spend a great deal of our time doing for others.  Nurses and doctors, for example, often devote their lives to helping others.  Police officers and firefighters also serve the community, even risking their own lives to help make others safe.  And many other people work hard to assist others in finding some measure of better, health, safety or happiness.

I am aware of these things.

But when it comes to trusting others, I’m still reluctant.  After all, even when people mean well, they cannot guarantee results.

A teacher may mean well when they give more time to this student while almost ignoring another.  A researcher may mean well even when his or her perceptions of an event or substance is in error.  A religious leader may mean well when they give false hope or when they waste their time judging the entire world by the peculiar doctrines of a local group.

Anyone can be wrong, and their error can make a difference in the lives of many other people.  Whole religions have been established on error, after all.  And whole schools of both religious and secular thinking have spent generations brow-beating bright students into submission to false ideas about life and the universe.

For these reasons, I am reluctant to trust even my own ideas and my judgment.  I’m just a human being, after all.  I am just as prone to error as everyone else.

So I’m left with only One person in all the world, and in all the universe, that I really do trust.  I trust in God.  I trust the life, the words, and the teachings of my Lord Jesus Christ.

In all my life I have found God to be always true and reliable.  Even when I did not trust Him, I still found Him to be true whenever the dust around me settled or the fog finally lifted.  I have found God to be true in my own life and in the lives of a great many others.

I trust the Lord.  Not because I have such great faith.

I am no saint for trusting in God.  I’m just as easily terrified or angered or discouraged as anyone else.  But I do have a long life that stands for me as a witness against my fears and frustrations and discouragements.

Even when I’m without faith, my own brain still reminds me that God has never failed me in the past.  In all the circumstances of my life, including my own times of personal sin and failure, the Lord has not failed to be true to His good Word.

As the sayings go: God never fails.  Jesus never fails.

It is very good to have friends and family that we can trust.  We all have times when we must rely on other people.  Even I do.  But no other human being has been able to always be there when I needed help.  Yet God has always been there for me.

He is with me when I’m home.  He’s there when I’m at work.  And when I’ve been in lonely places, even in remote and wilderness places, He was with me to guide me and help me through.

The Lord has never failed to give me good counsel and good help when I needed it.  And I have needed it lots of times in my life.

It’s only logical then that I trust in God.  It is only fair to reason itself and to the facts that I rely on Him for my life and health and safety.

My hope is entirely in Him.

The Scripture says:

“Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
When their breath departs,
they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever.”
(Psalm 146: 3-6, NRSV)

Jim