Hope does not disappoint…
What does it take for us to trust in God?
As they traverse the desert on their way to the Promised Land in the Book of Exodus, the people of Israel have every reason to grumble against Moses. After all, they are afraid they will die here of thirst with their children and their livestock! It is not an idle complaint. God’s promise was clear; God promised to take care of them. And yet the moment they are afflicted, the promise goes out the window. Their hearts, as Psalm 33 states, are hardened, and they test the Lord, rejecting God and turning on Moses. But Moses turns to God, knowing that God can provide what he himself can’t. Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it, God tells Moses. Moses relies on God to do the unexpected, to lead him where he needs to be, rather than where he wants to be.
When, in John’s Gospel, Jesus comes to Jacob’s well in Sychar, a town of Samaria, he plans to call those rejected by the Jews to have faith in him. His encounter with the Samaritan woman is transformative; he is calling her – and her town – to something new, opening her slowly to the revelation present in her midst, Jesus himself, the Christ. Jesus is not caught up in the woman’s possible sin; Jesus is caught up in her personhood and in the dignity of her humanity and in her capacity to give witness. Trusting in the Lord who entrusts her with his presence, the Samaritan woman runs to town filled with the Spirit, leaving behind her water jug but carrying with her living water that she brings to her community to drink.
We too are called to trust, to faith, to belief in that which we cannot prove. We are called to take a leap beyond all physical evidence and to trust in all that God has revealed. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul reminds them that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; his is the grace in which we stand, a capacity to stand and give witness. Our struggle is to get past our wants and needs and to remain hopeful for that which is to come, that which is promised – his love for us, a love greater than any we have ever imagined. For that is where true faith leads us, beyond our comprehension, stretching us farther than we ever thought possible, so long as our hearts are open to his revelation and to his promise.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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