Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Do you have someone in your life you don’t quite trust? Maybe you have an older brother who’s always pulling pranks on you. You love him and everything, but you don’t exactly trust him. Or maybe it’s a friend or a family member who has let you down in some way or another, and you’ve learned the hard way they aren’t so deserving of your trust. Now picture someone who you do trust. A best friend, a teammate, one of your parents. Whenever this person is around, you’re put at ease, knowing that you can handle whatever comes your way together, and this person always has your back.

Maybe thinking about trust brings to mind a trust-fall you did as a teambuilding activity, or perhaps an image like Aladdin extending his hand, inviting Jasmine to step onto the magic carpet, asking “Do you trust me?” It’s not an easy thing to trust people, and usually those that we do trust have earned it.

In the First Reading from Jeremiah this week, we hear, “Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD.” If most of us are being honest, we could work on trusting in God a little more. Sure, we might love God, but we often have trouble trusting him. We think to ourselves, “Sure, God has a plan for my life…but it’s most likely what I want to do anyway so I’ll just go ahead and do that…”

But when you read the lives of the saints or hear stories from people today who have been living out their faith for a while, it usually doesn’t work that way. God’s call, whether it’s gradual or seems to come out of nowhere, might even be exactly the opposite of what they had in mind for themselves. But in spending time with God in prayer and talking to people they trust for spiritual wisdom, they come to see that even if it seems like a big leap of faith, God will back them up. And following God’s plan (even if it doesn’t line up with our own) is what will really make us happy in the end.
[[In-content Ad]]Maybe you have a group of friends or a relationship that’s leading you down a bad path, and you feel like God wants you to make a clean break – but you’re afraid you’ll end up lonely. Maybe you’re on track to make the big bucks working in finance, but you feel like God is nudging you to work for a nonprofit that works with the homeless. Maybe you’ve already made some sort of sacrifice following God’s call, and you’re still waiting for him to come through on his end. It all takes trust, and there’s no magic button we can press to jump to 100% on the trust-o-meter. But here’s what we can do.

In the Psalm this week, we hear, “Blessed the man who…delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on his law day and night.” The way to grow in trust is to grow in our life of prayer. If we’re spending time with God “day and night”, we’ll come to know him more, we’ll reflect on all he’s already done for us and how he’s earned our trust (even though he was already deserving of it anyway)! And if we keep this up, we’ll be like the tree in the first reading, where “in the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.”