Better Than Gravity--August 25, 2023

Better Than Gravity--August 25, 2023

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body." [Proverbs 3:5-8]

To be honest, I believe in gravity because I don't really have a choice.  Like it or not, understand it or not, I have to operate every day as though there is a force pulling me to the ground so that I don't end up in a neck brace thinking I can fly or leap over tall buildings in a single bound. 

In the same way, I believe that the sun will come up every day (and that with each new day I have to get a certain amount of work done with the time I have in it), because it is unavoidable to do so.  Try as I might to wish the world away when I don't want to get out of bed on any given morning, the world keeps on spinning and the hours still keep ticking away.

There are a number of things like that that require my belief if I want to cope at all with the world as it is.  A lot of them are impersonal forces or laws of physics--gravity, time, my body's needs for heat, food, and water, and things like that.  These are things I believe, not because they care about me, but because they describe the world I live in, and I need to be aware of them if I want to keep living. I don't for a moment think that gravity gives a care about whether I fall or stand upright.  Time doesn't love me, and the sun doesn't have any emotional commitment to the question of how I use my day as it tracks across the sky.  These are impersonal realities, and they will continue to do their thing whether or not I acknowledge them--the only question is whether I will make my life harder by denying their existence.

But I have a different relationship with God.  I am convinced that my trust in God is grounded in something different, something more than gravity, even though it is still a kind of belief.  I believe in the force of gravity, but I know gravity doesn't have an opinion about me--it can't.  But when I say I believe in God, it's more than mentally acknowledging that God exists. It is trust that the God I believe in also loves me, and in fact has loved me first.

When the Scriptures direct us to "trust in the LORD with all your heart," it's that kind of faith.  The writer behind these few verses from Proverbs doesn't simply mean, "Mentally acknowledge the existence of God as one impersonal force in the universe like time, gravity, or the laws of thermodynamics."  No, the wise author wants us to trust that God not only exists but loves us enough to want our well-being and to guide us in good paths.  That's better than gravity, which will still pull on me all the same whether I am walking on solid ground or slipping off the edge of a cliff (even when the posted signs warned me not to stick my toes over the edge).  When it comes to me falling to my death or staying safe on a good path, gravity doesn't have a horse in that race.  God does, and God always seeks my well-being--and not just mine, but the wholeness of all people and of all creation. 

That's why it is worth trusting in God, in the sense the Scriptures mean it.  We sometimes hear this word from the Proverbs and assume that God's help is only held out to us as a reward for being good little trusters.  We can hear it as if the meaning is, "If you believe in God well enough (Hard enough?  Correctly enough?  With enough emotional fervor?), then God will do good things for you in return."  And then it becomes a transaction or a deal, a matter of conditional commitments, like some kind of spiritual quid pro quo.  

But that's not really what's going on here.  The idea behind this passage from Proverbs is more like, "Trust God, because God really is trust-worthy.  Because God actually cares about your well-being, you can trust God to keep you pointed in a good direction."  In other words, because God already loves you (and me, and all of us), you can believe it when God instructs us to orient our lives toward, say, justice and mercy, rather than self-centeredness and cruelty.  And that's just it--all of God's direction to us, whether in the form of commandments like "Don't murder," or "Don't covet what your neighbor has," or in broader terms like "compassion" or "generosity" or "faithulness" or "forgiveness," is all a matter of God guiding us away from the cliff and toward a reliable road.  When God directs us to love our neighbors, or when Jesus elevates that to include loving our enemies, it's not in order to make us earn God's love, but because God already loves us and knows that the best possible life is the one that flows from love of friend and foe alike.  When God directs us to give our resources so that our neighbors can eat, or to forgive the debts of those around us, or to care for the most vulnerable among us (yes, even at the cost of our own luxury or convenience), it's because God knows that these are part of a way of life that means wholeness for all.  And when we can trust that God loves us, then doing the things God directs us to do is no longer a matter of racking up points or earning favor--it's a matter of believing that God knows what is good for all of us, all around.  

Today, there will be things we have to believe in, regardless of whether those realities care about us or not--from physical forces like gravity to the enforcement of speed limits to limited number of hours in the day.  And we will have to accept on faith that these things are there, even though we don't always like them, and even though those impersonal forces don't particularly care about us.  But in the midst of all of those, we are also invited to trust that there is One who does care about us, whose love for us is the ground under our feet already, and who seeks the well-being of all the universe.  Today, let that be the path you walk on, and let's see where it takes us.

Lord Jesus, help us to trust that you have our interests at heart, as well as those of the whole world, so that we can trust what you tell us and go where you direct us.