Are You Trustworthy?

 Good afternoon.

 Over the course of a decade or more in working with the benevolent program at the church, I have become more attuned, I think, to the things people say and the possible meaning behind those things.  Many of those who come to the office looking for some kind of help are in a segment of society that many of us have little familiarity of.  The working poor and those who are disabled frequently visit the office asking for some kind of assistance.  Some are people I have worked with several times over the years, and have come to know more about their situations and life experiences.

In the course of conversation, people have told me about family members who are abusive or have been abused in some way.  They tell me about deadbeat boyfriends and adult children who won’t get a job.  They visit with me about someone they took into their home who was in worse shape than they, but have proven to be more of a burden than they could bear.  They speak to me about giving someone their last five dollars or their last meal rather than having that for themselves.

I have come to believe that most of what I hear by far is either the truth, or is the truth as they perceive it to be.  And even if only half of what they tell me is true, I still find it incredible that some of these people can even make it through the day, let alone weeks or months at a time.

I’m also finding out something else.  I have had several people, in the course of working with them over a long period of several years, and all of them women, tell me in the course of some conversation we were having that they trust me.

“I trust you,” they will say, stopping in the middle of some story to say that.  And then they will continue to tell about their latest run-in with a boyfriend, or their having to sleep on the street.  Or perhaps they will talk about a grown daughter who abandoned her children to Grandma.  Or they speak of some other thing in their life that is working against them.

These are, by and large, women who have suffered some kind of abuse from a man in their life.  A father or step-dad.  A boyfriend.  Or maybe a grown son.  It could be a friend or relative.

Whatever the circumstance, I have to wonder how many other men these women could say the same thing with sincerity…”I trust you.”  I have to wonder just how broken that trust factor is for them and how much courage it takes for them to say to me that they trust me.

I also wonder what it was, or is, that I have done or am doing that prompts these women to make that declaration to me…just how unusual it might be to have a man in their life who they feel like they can trust…and how many men have forfeited that relationship with them because of some abusive action.

I have to wonder just how this lack of trust has scarred these women, and how that scarring has affected their present circumstance…how things might be different for them if they only could have fully trusted other men who have been in their lives.  And I have to wonder just how I can work to help them regain appropriate trust in other people, and especially other men.

I then wonder, if I should introduce them to Jesus of Nazareth, just how they could possibly trust him.  Here he is, yet another man, telling them things that seem too good to be true, yet telling them to trust him implicitly, not only in this life, but in a life to come.  He tells them he can give them rest from their heavy burdens.  He tells them he will love them unconditionally and without reservation.  He says he can be their mentor and partner through life and will never leave them or toss them aside.

He says things that just seem to be utterly unfathomable to these women…women who have been abused, used, beaten and belittled.  Women who have endured so much pain and suffering at the hands of one or more of the men in her life.

Why, for heaven’s sake, would she want another man in her life such as Jesus?  She’s heard it all before.  The sky-high promises.  The “I love you,” language.  The lies wrapped in half truths.  He’s just another one of those who want something from me…he doesn’t really love or want me.  He just wants to use me and throw me away just like all the others.

“I trust you.”  That may well be something these women don’t say very often to very many others.  It may be something that is difficult for them to say even to me.  But it is something that I need to have a better grip on as far as the meaning behind it and my responsibility to not damage that trust in any way.  And rather suddenly, that short statement becomes a flashing sign in the darkness, telling me that I have a great responsibility, not only to this woman, but to all who I encounter…to emulate as best I can the life of Jesus…so that one day I may be able to tell them of this man who they too can trust.  Someone who can love them far more, and with a perfect love that I cannot fully emulate, even as hard as I might try.

I’ll leave this right there…and I’ll encourage you to take a long look at your relationships.  Can others say with sincerity that they trust you in the same sense that these women tell me?  Are you trustworthy?

 

Blessings,