Yet will I trust in Him

So many times I feel that I have found the pattern to what
makes the Lord 'tick' i.e. push this button and this will happen and push
that and that will happen. And while there are some definite patterns in
Scripture that the Lord gives us (obedience brings blessing and disobedience
brings disaster etc etc), there are also many times when something happens and
we are left standing helplessly, wondering what just hit us. Sometimes, if we
are honest, we are also left feeling betrayed by the very One who loves us. At
times like this, to save my sanity, I have often shelved those times for later
when hopefully the Lord will explain it to me and have carried on by faith,
hoping that these times won't happen too regularly. At the same time, I have
seldom talked about these 'betrayal' times because I don't want to stumble
anyone else's faith but often I lay in bed and ponder over them and wonder
why.

What do I mean by betrayal? Do I mean some of the unusual
deaths that have occurred in the family? No, I don't. What about some of the
sicknesses and disabling ailments that are affecting my family? No. I don't
like them but I don't struggle with the sovereignty of God over these. It's
actually different situations such as when I was around 18 years old and was
sleeping alone in our big house for the very first time in my life. We lived out
in the country and the neighbours were not 'next door' as city dwellers know
it. That night, I was quite nervous and cheered myself up with the thought that
if I committed everything to the Lord (myself, the animals and the property), He
would protect it all and then I went to sleep. Sometime later, I awoke to a
horrible screaming noise outside in the blackness (no street lights here) and I
was petrified. I lay with my head under the blankets and called out to the Lord
for help. Finally I went to my parent's room and called my boyfriend (now my
husband, Dennie) and he came down and found that a ferret had attacked one of
our rabbits and bitten a big hole in his neck. (I didn't know until then that
rabbits scream like humans when under attack.) After we attended to the rabbit
and everything calmed down, I had to ask Dennie to stay for the rest of the
night as I, reeling from the fact that the Lord didn't protect the rabbit as I'd
asked, didn't feel I could trust Him for safety for awhile.

This is not an easy subject to write about because I can
imagine hackles going up very quickly in defence of the total 'faithfulness of
the Lord'. Does this mean I don't believe in this faithfulness any longer?
No, it doesn't. What it does mean though is that I've changed how I define
'faithfulness'. In fact, if I was a gambling girl, I would place a bet that
Job also changed his definition of faithfulness after the Lord allowed the
destruction of all his property, the death of all his children, and boils to
multiply rapidly all over his body. This is why he could say, "Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him." With the benefit of hindsight and
the Bible, we are privileged to know the background scene of what took place in
Heaven and how the Lord actively pointed out to Satan that Job would be a good
person to demonstrate loyalty and real love for God. This sounds remarkably like
betrayal to me and yet I now believe, it only means betrayal when we view
this life from our human-ness. Job was the one who was bewildered and left
wondering as to what had gone wrong when he had faithfully followed all the
principles of God - he was seeing it as a human. God, on the other hand, was
working on a deeper part of the picture of life that Job knew nothing about. Job
never even realised what a great cosmic victory had been won through him! In
fact, he didn't find out about it until after he died.

It keeps coming back to me over and over again, how small our
picture of life really is. In a book that I'm reading at the moment (The
Sacred Romance -– Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis and John
Eldredge) it says, "We would like to picture goodness as being
synonymous with safety." This, however, is not always how God works, as
is demonstrated by the story of Job. "When we think of God being good,
we perhaps picture someone like Al on the popular TV program, Home Improvement.
He is someone who carefully plans out each task ahead of time and made
allowances to ensure our safety as his workmate; someone who goes to bed early,
gets plenty of rest, and wears flannel shirts as a mark of his reliability.

A man named Walter Bruggeman wrote "We live our lives
before the wild, dangerous, unfettered and free character of the living
God". As I read this I wondered why anyone would say such a thing about
God but then, as I read Psalm 18, I realised that it clearly demonstrates this
'wildness'. When God heard the cry of one of His children who was in
trouble, it says that the earth shook and trembled because of His wrath (this
doesn't sound like anyone who is fettered to me), smoke came out of His
nostrils and fire from His mouth (definitely dangerous), He came speeding down
to earth on an angel with wings of the wind, throwing hailstones and coals of
fire about (this doesn't exhibit the refined and restrained character that I
imagined Him to possess) but....I so love verse 19 where it says that "He
brought me forth also into a large place; He delivered me, because He
delighted in me." Amazing to think that this wildness was brought
out on my behalf -– He delighted in me! He delights in us!

What then is the point that I'm trying to get to? The point
is that when we start to get a clearer picture of the real heart of God -– how
He loves us, we also realise that regardless of what happens, we
can trust Him!

(Note -– do I care about the betrayal in the rabbit story
now? No. I'll just ask God about the bigger picture when I get home.)