Heat, Drought and Trust

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,

whose trust is the Lord.

They shall be like a tree planted by water,

sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,

and its leaves shall stay green;

in the year of drought it is not anxious,

and it does not cease to bear fruit.

(Jeremiah 17:7-8)

In this particular writing from Jeremiah, the Lord speaks to Judah of trust, equating the one who trusts in the Lord with a tree which perennially bears fruit, regardless the weather. Trust is what connects beyond words or actions. Trust conveys a sense of holy covenant, bound by the heart, far beyond the capacity of the head to understand.

In the heat, trees wither and die. In a drought, fruit is not produced in abundance. The head can comprehend such things. Yet, trust in the Lord, the one whose trust is the Lord, is the articulation of an alternate reality: There is no condition, adverse or otherwise, which can sever the bond between God and God's people. Where the head perceives life one way, trust in the Lord defines life differently, bringing peace.

In the wee hours of the night in our home, as Nancy and I watch the challenges and paces through which the Basics of the Air Force Academy are journeying via the AOG and WebGuy, I was reminded of this text from Jeremiah. It occurs to me that the Basics are learning to trust in a new way: to trust their gifts; to trust each other; to trust their cadre; to trust their instincts which brought them to the AFA; to trust the outcome to a plan larger than their understanding; to trust their body's capacity to endure; and to trust the AFA's chain of command - not to the exclusion of trust in the Lord, but modeling it out of profound respect of such trust.

As complicated and intricate as that may seem, such trust is profoundly simple for it does not require relinquishing one's own self to another but, rather, investing one's own self completely in the other. Ideally, the AFA puts into practice in the ranks what God expects us to embody in the world with each other: trust.

In its purest form, trust of each other connects our hearts in accomplishing a singular outcome: living for each other in a world community which glorifies our Creator or, as Jeremiah suggests, 'being fruitful'.

As the AFA strives to develop among the Basics a trust which will build a particularized community, I recognize that the trust which the AFA fosters is necessarily parochial, speaking to a world where not everyone can be, or wants to be, trusted. Pragmatically, the AFA (and all other military academies) would have no reason to exist if trust in the Lord, as opposed to trust only of self, was the faith of the many. Yet, even as God envisioned with Judah, so might it happen here: If we can just learn to trust in some small way, in some small place, in some small time . . . and practice that trust with each other, then perhaps we can learn to trust in larger ways, in larger places, in larger times . . . and become fruitful in every condition.

Trust in the Lord is something upon which to pray and towards which to live every day. As the Basics of the AFA learn something of trust with each other, I pray we all can live into the prophecy of Jeremiah for Judah, for life is found in no other way.

Your servant in Christ,

Pastor Don