Americans have been coping for months with the many faces of uncertainty: How will I find a job? What if we lose our home? Can I afford to send my daughter to college? Will we be able to retire as planned? Our son has to move back home. No vacation this year.

Our responses to uncertainty may include resignation, terror, anger, courage, despair, creativity, depression. I also sense that the present climate is providing skepticism and cynicism about a new lease on life. Every sector of society appears riddled with greed and deceit—politics, education, business, church, sports. Since no one wants to be seen as a “chump,” we quickly install a protective shell around us. We better take advantage of “them” before they take advantage of “us.”

A deeper and more troubling result of widespread uncertainty is a sense of loss and disappointment in the human race. We may feel isolated, saddened and powerless that, beyond our intimate circle, we cannot count on each other any more.

A third response, based in faith, leads us to trust anew, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary. Trust is not gullibility, stupidity or naïveté—the Gospels tell us that we are to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16). Nor is it passivity, irresponsibility or a laissez-faire attitude toward the world’s suffering.

Genuine trust involves having a clear, informed vision of the evils in ourselves and in the world, and, in spite of this, opting to trust anyway. It means rolling up our sleeves to work hard for justice, knowing that any work we do is held up by God’s faithfulness to the human good. One place to begin is to work on becoming more trustworthy ourselves—at home, with friends and at work.

Hard times have the potential to bring out the best or the worst in each of us. But the call of baptism lures us to choose as our fundamental option the belief that God is reliable and that we too can be reliable when we open ourselves to grace (Luke 19:17). At the present moment, the choice to trust is a tall order. But to live without trust is to live in a kind of hell on earth because betrayal of trust erodes the very fabric of our life together.

God calls each of us, as women, as men, to trust the promise of life. Some of us will simply pray for the virtue of trust—in God, in others, in ourselves. Others will be ready to fall into the arms of God. Others still will respond to the idea of falling into God’s arms with Augustine’s famous caveat—yes, but not yet.

For good and ill, Americans boast of an independent spirit. Most of us come to trust kicking and screaming, letting go only when there is nothing left that we can do or say to make things right. Whenever we do make the plunge, however, we catch a glimpse of the in-breaking of the Kingdom: the world held up by the two hands of God—Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The Christian tradition can be a watering hole in troubled times. Many of our ancestors in the faith accepted the wager that life would prevail over death (1 Corinthians 1:55). On every page, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah speak of trust. Jesus tells us not to let our hearts be troubled but to trust in God (John 14:1). Paul prays that the God of hope will fill us with the joy and peace that trust brings, so that we will abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13). Spring will come again; the snow becomes the rose; new life is renewed in our hearts; we are forgiven seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22).

We are called to take to heart the words of fourteenth-century English anchoress, Julian of Norwich that “All will be well.” We have before us everywhere wrangling, skepticism, cynicism, unbelief and distrust. Let us choose life, belief and trust (Deuteronomy 30:19).

In what ways today is your trust based in faith? Share your thoughts by clicking on Contact Us.