Living Deeply

Jesus says, "I Dare You To Trust Me" (Brennan Manning)

When I was outside an alcohol and drug rehab center in New Orleans, and I was clutching a pint of Taaka vodka, what I did not want was the lifesaving treatment of detox in a 28-day program.

I kept on drinking, a drunken child crying out, "Jesus, where are you?" How do we experience trust in the midst of pain, suffering, heartache, and throbbing despair? I mean, is it possible to endure and eventually move beyond the bleak and melancholy landscape of evil and destruction, back to the experience of God as unconditional love? That's the problem I ask Christians. Do you trust that God loves you? Everybody says, oh yes, I've known that for a long time. Then just watch the way they live. There's so much fear, so much anxiety, and so much self-hatred. The best definition of faith I ever heard was Paul Tillich when he said, "Faith is the courage to accept acceptance."

Meaning? Faith is a code to accept that Jesus knows my whole life story, every skeleton in my closet, every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty, degradedness darkening my past. Right now he knows my shallow faith, my feeble prayer life, my inconsistent discipleship, and he comes beside me and he says, I dare you to trust. I dare you to trust that I love you, just as you are and not as you should be, because you're never going to be as you should be.

Trust (Paul de Jaegher)

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father. For him it has both charm and fascination. Among his countless children, whom he so greatly loves and whom he heaps with tenderness and favors, there are few indeed, who truly entrusting themselves to him, live as veritable children of God. There are as few who respond to his goodness by a trust at once filial and unshaken. And so it is that he welcomes with a love of predilection those souls, all too few in number, who in adversity as in joy, in tribulation and consolation, unfalteringly trust in his paternal love. Such souls truly delight and give immense pleasure to the heart of their heavenly Father. There is nothing he is not prepared to give them. "Ask of me half of my Kingdom" he cries to the trusting soul, and I will give it to you.

The Wager (Blaise Pascal)

"Either God exists, or he does not." But which side shall we take?  Reason cannot decide for us one way of the other; we are separated by an infinite gulf.  A game is on, at the other side of this infinite distance, where either heads or tails will turn up.  Which will you gamble on?

Let us weigh the gain and the loss in betting that God exists.  If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing.  Do not hesitate, then gamble on his existence.

You want to come to faith, but you do not know the way.  You would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and you ask for remedies.  Learn from those who were once bound and gaged like you, and who now stake all that they possess.  There are the people who know the road you wish to follow; they are cured of the disease of which you wish to be cured.  Follow the way by which they are set out: by acting as though they already believed.

Now what harm will come to you of you follow his course?  You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful.  Certainly you will not enjoy those poisonous pleasures, ambition, and luxury.  But will you not have others?  I tell you that you will gain in this life, and that at every step you take along this road you will see so great an assurance of gain, and so little in what you risk, that you will finally realize you have gambled on something certain and infinite, which has cost you nothing.

A Prayer for the Lost (Thomas Merton)

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.