In you, LORD my God,
I put my trust.
- Psalm 25:1

In whom do you place your trust?

Everywhere we look people clamor for our trust. Marketers make promises to us and ask us to trust them. Friends, neighbors, colleagues, partners all ask us to trust them. Politicians and religious leaders, the waiter at that restaurant, your mechanic … they all want you to trust them.

We can’t navigate this complex world without trust. Trust is the currency of relationships. God made us to trust: to trust people, to trust ourselves, and to trust him. But something has gone horribly wrong. We all know this.

Deciding who to trust and how much to trust them can be difficult. We know that some of the people who ask for our trust do not deserve our trust. We have been deceived, disappointed, and hurt. Trust is essential but trust is also fragile. Trust breaks under the weight of human brokenness.

What’s more, we know that we ourselves can’t claim to be worthy of trust. Despite our best efforts we disappoint people we care about. In our darkest moments we betray the trusts we’ve been given. Only the sociopath can say in every circumstance and without a heartbeat’s hesitation: “Trust me.”

But it’s a different matter altogether with God. The psalmist picks up on that in today’s passage. God alone is worthy of our complete and total trust. He alone possesses the character that merits our absolute trust. He doesn’t deceive us. He’s always there for us. Our trust is safe with him.

Now, this doesn’t mean you won’t be disappointed by God. This doesn’t mean life won’t lay hands on you and hurt you. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be dark days ahead.

Fighting the battle to place our trust in God shapes us. We become more aware that the world in which we live is complicated, broken and beautiful. We become more aware that we need other people and God. We become more aware that God is involved in our workaday lives and in our wild world.

Take a few minutes today to tell God you trust him. If this is difficult for you to say or do, you can try praying a prayer like this: “Lord, I place my trust in you. Help me to place my trust in you. Help me to trust you enough to want to place my trust in you.”