Dependence and Trust

A fourth-grader, speaking to his teacher after religion class, observed with considerable precocity, “God’s pretty smart. He put our ears in the right place long before eyeglasses were even invented.”

If we were to list all the things for which we depend on God, it would nearly exhaust our eternity! When we acknowledge our dependence on him, and do so appreciatively, in reference to future as well as past provisions, it is another form of the virtue of trust.

At every turn we find ourselves trusting humans, as St. John reminds us in 1 John 5:9. Yet, as he emphasizes, God is even more trustworthy. We trust barbers not to scalp, cooks not to poison, surgeons not to stab, pilots not to crash, and hunters not to use guns to murder. Though human reliability is usually very solid, it isn’t perfect; but God’s is. We depend on him to make the sun rise, to keep the ecology in marvelous balance, to keep the atmosphere clinging to the earth so we can breathe, to keep our hearts beating without conscious effort on our part, to keep the oceans from freezing, and to do countless other things.

The fact that he does all this is good, but he wants more than an orderly universe. He wants us humans to be awestruck by that order and to be conscious of our dependence on him because of it. In a word, he wants us to cultivate a conscious trust in recognizing our total dependence on him. He reminds us of this quite compellingly: “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

This excerpt is from the book Pathways of Trust, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.