We just got back from Colorado after a week of Family Camp through Young Life. I could go on and on about the different positive experiences we had as a family and individually but instead, want to focus on just one: Trust.
With 36 families and 60+ workers and staff, there were over 200 strangers at the camp and zero locked doors. That’s right, no locked doors. We each had separate quarters for our families and yes, we did lock our door from the inside while we slept at night, but the camp issued no keys. No one locked their room all week.
Where else on the planet could you put 200 strangers in one room and not lock up purses, computers, phones, tablets, travel money and vacation spoils and not one thing gets stolen. Not one.
Trust is a commodity we don’t trade in well in our culture anymore. Not a culture where cable repairmen can stake out your house later for a score or to harm your children. Not in a culture where coats misplaced at school are stolen instead of turned into lost and found. Not in a culture where windows of cars are broken to steal phones. Not in a culture of stolen identities and credit/debit card hacking.
Resting fully in trust with no locks and my children running freely anywhere on the camp was unnerving at first and the felt suddenly necessary and freeing.
I grew up in a small town where we left our keys in the ignition of our cars in parking lots with unlocked doors. Believe me, this habit helped me get to know lots of local locksmiths after I went off to college – due to locking my keys in the car. My parents didn’t lock the doors of the house until I was in college. But that small town trust has even left most small towns.
What has happened to our culture that we don’t trust, can’t trust, can’t be safe. Why is everything up for grabs? Why are we constantly playing defense?
So if this is the cultural phenomenon we are encased in, then what does that lack of trust for situations do to us in relationships? In our faith? In our health?
If we are playing defense and setting up tall fences to protect our kids and our ipads, then how do we trust our spouse, our pastor, our smallgroup and our doctor?
How can we not trust the world, but trust each other?
One step at a time. One day at a time. Be aware of how guarded you are. Be aware of how doubtful and untrusting you are. Develop an antennae for trust and the places where it is safe to put your guard up, but it cannot stay up all the time.
We are all sinful creatures and we fall short. Doctors fall short, spouses fall short, people fall short. The world will fail with its soft rules and political correctness. But you know what a week living with unlocked doors does?
It restores your faith in mankind. It restores your ability to trust. It take a layer off my jaded, cynical soul. People all have a sinful nature, yes, but they also have a genuine capacity for kindness and trustworthiness – goodness.
Its true. So if you are like me and lean toward the jaded side of life. Let me suggest a refreshing dip in the world of trust and go camping. Leave your car unlocked. Go to the lake (that’s a whole other blog about how I love the culture of lake people and their kindness and hospitality). Go to family camp. Go to a really small town in the middle of nowhere.
My kids got to see me trust them. Got to experience trustworthiness that we don’t do every day in the city at home. I got to see trust in action and remember that blatant uninhibited trust is what God expects of us.
He is the founder and creator of trust – right? He is trustworthy and has never let us down. Never forsaken. Never left us. Never not be in control. Never worried. Never been jaded. Never.
You don’t have to trust the doctor, just trust the God who led you there. You don’t have to trust the President, just the God who appointed and allowed him to rule. You don’t have to trust the police officer, just trust the God who gives him the job and allows him to work. You don’t have to trust the banks, the school, your neighbors and the stranger down the road. You just have to trust your maker. Trust in God.
Trust that He who made you is the same He who says that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil 1:6)
Trust.
This double rainbow photo was our second day there – view from our deck. Isn’t that what the rainbow means anyway – trust me. I can be trusted. I promise.
Blessings and healing,
Janice Fairbairn – The Lyme Evangelist
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