I love the opening of Psalm 25 – “In you Lord my God, I put my trust.” Trust is an interesting concept. It involves humility. In an opening verse like that it implies some stuff. It says I don’t know everything and there are things I’m unsure about. It says there are things I can’t see in front of me and I don’t have absolute confidence in my own abilities/perceptions/strengths so I need the thing I’m going to ‘trust’. Faith is similar. I need both trust and faith in abundance but they don’t come easily for me. How about you?
Photo: Francis Ritchie. Freedom in Aida camp – West Bank (Palestinian territory).
Because I need them there is a bit of Psalm 25 highlighted in my Bible and I use it as a quick prayer from time to time.
Show me your ways Lord,
teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
For you are God, my Saviour,
and my hope is in you all day long.
Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love,
for they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth
and my rebellious ways;
according to your love
remember me,
for you, Lord, are good.
-Psalm 25:4-7 (NIV)
It would have been easy to stop the highlighting at the end of verse 6 and just gone with the fuzzy feel that doesn’t recognise the frailty of who I have been, but trust means recognising that. If I was to hide that then I wouldn’t really be trusting.
Using those words of prayer are an act of trying to trust because it says there is something bigger than me and I’m placing myself within it. It says there’s still a long way for us to go but we’re willing to walk that journey even though we don’t know exactly what that looks like.
That prayer trusts that I am not the sum of who I have been; that God sees more. It looks to mercy and love – attributes that see deeper. The challenge is, if I’m willing to call for those thing, can I trust enough to extend them to others. You see, it takes trust not just to call on God’s mercy and love and what that entails but to then extend it to others when we ourselves could get hurt, that takes real trust and faith.
May we be people who trust and can be trusted.
Read more of my reflections on the Psalms.
Here’s why I’m walking this journey through the Psalms.
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