Trusting His faithfulness

Ronald Reagan said “Trust but verify.” He said it about enemies, but I’ve done it with God all my life. Now I’m learning to trust without verification.

I see a pattern in events in the last year. God is transforming me again by teaching me to trust in new ways. It started with Jayne. Jayne is a cat. He belongs to my son’s family who are living with me temporarily. In mid-October, he just disappeared. We last saw him on Friday and by Sunday, we realized he had not been seen since. There was a walk through the neighborhood calling his name (he explores other people’s open garages and sometimes gets locked in) but he didn’t answer. Online and neighborhood notices went up with no response.

We speculated about why he was missing. He’s very friendly; had someone just taken him? Did someone hit him with a vehicle and dispose of the body? Did he get in someone’s moving van and, like garages, get locked in for a trip to wherever? We have no answer.

Since Jayne went missing, I am struggling with why God won’t let us know what happened to him. I first ask that he come home. Then I asked what happened. Then when no answers came, I began to ask about if there ever would be an answer this side of heaven and I felt like God was asking me if I would be okay if I never knew.

I am not yet okay. Other harder things have happened in my life for which there were no answers and I’m not okay yet with those either. God wants me to deal with this discontent. Asking questions is innate to my personality and was reinforced by my first job after college a newspaper reporter. One of the pathologists I work with could tell you I still ask the questions.

The issue with God is do I trust Him with what I cannot know? I realize that I have been trying to make sense of the past and sometimes, I receive revelation about a situation or person that satisfies me. An example was my father’s life – he continually made bad choices from early on. I realized a long time ago that as a young man, he had decided to please himself above all others. His choices resulted in a broken family and unstable relationships over and over again. I believe he repented in the end but many suffered because of his lifestyle, including him.

I still don’t understand many things and what happened to the cat is one of them. What I do know is this: Not knowing is always a trial for me and God has purposes for trials:

James 1: 2-4  Consider it nothing but joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials. Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]. And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing.

So today I choose to leave Jayne in the hands of the One Who cares for everything, even the sparrow no one values, knowing I will grow in both endurance and peace. He is more interested in my character than my comfort. Resting in His faithfulness produces peacefulness in me. Are you resting today?