Radical Trust

     It’s an old story and a hard lesson. The people of God—those who have entered into covenant with the Divine—have faced a choice in a crisis…and have failed. During some international troubles, lost perhaps not to history but at least to me, the people’s leaders have turned to Egypt seeking an alliance against a threatening enemy. Isaiah finds this decision reprehensible and a failure both of nerve and of faith. Instead of seeking human aid from an unreliable ally, the prophet opines, they should have turned with trusting eyes and hearts to Yahweh. Because of this failure, he predicts calamitous defeat: “A thousand shall flee at the threat of one; at the threat of five you shall flee until you are left like a flagstaff on the top of a mountain, like a signal on a hill” (v. 17).

     The better choice, Isaiah says, is to trust in God. “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (v. 15). Don’t turn to outside help in your time of trial; put your faith in God and all will be well.

     It reminds me of the scene at the shore of the Red Sea, as the children of Israel find themselves between the rock of the sea and the hard place of the advancing Egyptian cavalry and begin to panic. They turn on Moses, saying, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exod 14:11–12).

     Moses’s response resembles Isaiah’s counsel. He tells the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still” (Exod 14:13–14). And of course the promised deliverance comes as God makes a way for the Israelites through the sea but causes Pharaoh and his charioteers to drown when the divided waters return to their place.

     I can think of other examples of this call to trust in God, and perhaps you can as well. God delivers the people from the Midianites by sending Gideon and a measly three hundred warriors into battle armed only with torches, trumpets, and empty clay jars (see Judges 7). The prophet Zechariah brings the word of God to Zerubbabel: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit” will the people be delivered (Zech 4:6). And we have the counsel of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. . . . But strive first for the kingdom of God and [God’s] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt 6:25, 33).

     Again and again in the Scriptures God’s prophets call on the people not to trust in their own strength or the power of human allies, or to give in to anxiety. Trust is the watchword for life in covenant with God, and when they forgo that trust and seek security in another source, dire consequences await.

     In Christian circles we talk a lot about faith, and we have a tendency to think of it as believing in certain principles or propositions, but a better understanding of faith is radical trust. It’s giving over control of our lives to God. It’s standing firm in times of trial, trusting God to care for us and choosing not to have a Plan B. It's saying with Jesus in Gethsemane, "Not what I want, but what you want" (Mark 14:36). We are called to the type of trust that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego demonstrate when they tell King Nebuchadnezzar, “We believe our God can protect us and save us from your fiery furnace, but even if we thought God wouldn’t come through for us we still would not worship your stupid golden statue” (see Daniel 3).

     In what ways is God calling you to exercise radical trust? What will you do when you feel tempted to find your security in a source other than God, such as your own strength and resources, or a rival “god” such as money or status or temporal power? Do you really believe that “the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore [God] will rise up to show mercy to you”? (v. 18a). Can you affirm with the prophet that “the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for [God]”? (v. 18b).