Entrusting yourself to God

I had a ritual as a young child about to go somewhere scary like visiting the dentist. I’d close a door in the house, letting my fingers rest for a few seconds on the handle. ‘The next time I touch this,’ I’d tell myself, ‘all will be well.’  I guess I was grasping for assurance that I’d make it through the experience.

Just before Christmas, I had another of those scary visits to make – I had a small operation at the Day Case Unit at Raigmore Hospital. I was particularly apprehensive about this because a general anaesthetic was required. Much as I enjoy sleeping, the idea of being deprived of consciousness didn’t appeal.

What helped in the hours before the op was the thought that God was there, that I could entrust myself to God and was therefore utterly secure. With that knowledge I was able to walk calmly into the outer precincts of the operating theatre, and climb on a trolley. (Although I did catch myself thinking ‘The next time my feet touch the floor, all will be well.’)

The anaesthetists were gentle and reassuring. Before I knew it I was opening my eyes in the recovery area. I believe I was able to be calm not primarily because I trusted the medics – though I did, and they were brilliant – but because I was enabled to rely on God.

This sense of God’s reliability was not, I must emphasise, an obviously supernatural or spiritual experience. It was no more and no less that an awareness that God was present, and an instinctive sense that because God was present I need not fear.

It’s my guess that as Christians we should entrust ourselves to God in this way whatever we are doing, no matter whether mundane or life-changing. Even in the final act of feeling the fear and doing it anyway – the act of dying – we can entrust ourselves into the care of God:  in a sense all our lives are preparing us for that great entrusting.

Why do we find it so hard to entrust daily life to God?  Is it because in the routine we have confidence in our own abilities, in our social networks and the resources we can access, and feel perfectly capable of handling whatever the day throws at us?

Clearly it’s not appropriate for us to expect God to solve all our problems without our input, for God has given us intelligence, creativity and resources and expects us to use these constantly to make a success of our lives. But ultimately it’s God we are depending on, not our abilities and resources. God is with us in our wrestling with difficulties and emotions, in our problem-solving, in our creativity. The creative solutions are both our work and God’s gift.

Why was so aware of God’s presence that scary moment morning at Raigmore? Not because I had made a big decision to entrust myself to God. The sense of God’s reliable presence was there before the entrusting.  It came as a precious gift, perhaps an answer to people’s prayers for me.

What about times when we have no reassuring sense of God’s presence, times when we entrust ourselves to God and things go horribly wrong? Do we walk away sadly, convinced that all our experiences of grace have been illusions? Or do we remind ourselves of everything we have ever known of God’s love and in the light of those memories resolve to keep believing that our God-focussed trust has not been misplaced, even though for the moment the house of our security tumbles around us?

But come on, isn’t the story of God just another crutch, another ritual we grasp to reassure ourselves of our survival in an uncertain world? Isn’t buying into the story of God a failure to be brave, to leave the door-handle untouched and set off into the darkness alone?

Supposing we have been designed for constant dependence on God. If that were true relying on God would not be like leaning on a crutch. It would be as natural as breathing, eating, drinking.  It’s been said of the human race that ‘somewhere, somehow we began to live as though we were separate, alone and in danger.’

But our deepest conviction as Christians is that we are made for constant, on-line connectivity to God, that through entrusting ourselves to God we find security in this dimension and in the dimension to come whatever the danger. On this understanding, not to entrust ourselves to God is as mad as not eating, not breathing.

And so at the start of 2013 as Christians we commit ourselves, our families, our communities, and our nation to the God to whom we are learning to entrust each moment, each breath. 

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 3rd January 2013)