Since September, those who attend ‘Well in the Week’ on Thursday mornings at Seaton Road Methodist Church, Felixstowe, have been considering ‘Essentials for Wellness’. We probably all know the essentials for life – food, water, shelter, love, and we could, in these modern times, add a healthy diet, exercise, and mindfulness to the list. But what of our spiritual health? This series of Thought for the Day brings to mind what is essential to keep our souls healthy and well.
‘TRUST’
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight’
Proverbs 3 : 5 – 6
A verse in Hebrews describes trust – or faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
I remember when my children were toddlers, at the stage between crawling and walking having a great fascination for the stairs. They could crawl up them, but with a great danger of falling, and they hadn’t mastered walking up them, so I would walk behind them holding their arms as they tried to climb, unaware that if I let go, they would fall backwards. They couldn’t see me but had implicit trust that I wouldn’t let them go.
We put our trust in all manner of things and people, planes, chairs, surgeons and dentists – and pilots. I am not that keen on flying, have absolutely no idea how a plane stays up in the sky, or how to fly it, so if I want to get somewhere, I have to put my trust in the man – or woman, that does know these things.
It’s a bit the same with our trust in God, we have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow, but God does. We can make plans that extend to years ahead, but it doesn’t mean to say that they will happen. This could make us anxious and afraid – the opposite to faith and trust.
So the first step in discovering the essential for wellness that is Trust, is to acknowledge God, and that he knows us and our needs and concerns better than we do ourselves.
‘Commit your way to the Lord, says the psalmist, trust in him, and he will act’. That is quite a difficult thing to do, to put all your trust in someone else, and especially in someone you can’t even see. But it has to be an ongoing process, a daily routine like brushing your teeth. ’Continually seek him’, says the psalmist.
Everyday we have new challenges to confront and need God’s presence and strength to face them. We will never get to the stage when we can manage on our own. God didn’t design us that way. He has all the resources we will ever need for whatever happens, and he has proven his reliability a zillion times.
I have always been intrigued by the way three people reacted in three different ways to the same situation in the account from John’s gospel.
Mary sees the empty tomb, and in fear and mistrust of what might have happened to Jesus, runs to tell Peter and John. They both run to the tomb, and John gets there first, looks in, but through fear and mistrust doesn’t go in. Peter arrives, and goes into the tomb to see for himself and try to make sense of what might have happened. John then summons up courage to join him, sees and believes. We are not told what Mary and Peter think, only that they did not understand the scripture.
But we do, or at least we can believe in the accounts of the resurrection.
We just have to trust that belief. To climb the stairs of our life trusting that God is behind us and won’t let us go. It is essential for wellness.