Trust

"He who loves, trusts."-Author Unknown

The funny thing about this post is: I started it over a year ago. I literally wrote the quote above "He who loves, trusts" in May of 2008. I read this and it still resonates with me, it still calls out to some corner of my soul and makes sense of it. Truly, this is a very beautiful quote, simple, and eloquent, like many things it reflects the nature of the Christian life, and God Himself to a certain extent. 

Paul George gave this talk at a Steubenville West conference a few years ago, and the imagery he used was so simple, but so eloquent, and so beautiful, again, like the quote above. He talked about how he loves sharing the gospel with the youth, but the hardest thing for him every single time he leaves home is having to say good-bye to his kids. Tears well up in his daughter's face and she always asks him, "Why do you have to go daddy?" The love she has for her father manifests itself in a very simple, beautiful way. He continued on and told us all about how when he comes home, he pulls into his garage and has to walk up an old, rickety flight of stairs. His daughter always hear him as he takes that first step, and by the time he's a few steps from the top, she flings the door of the house open and leaps from the landing into her daddy's awaiting arms. That story has always stuck with me, it penetrated a part of me that I've always been guarded about letting other people know: how much I want to be a father and have a daughter. Ultimately, it is an example of a beautiful, simple, eloquent expression of love, and in turn, of trust.

The image of Paul's daughter leaping into his awaiting arms shows such a great trust that she has for her daddy. He didn't say that she checked to see if he was ready, he didn't say that she paused at the top of the stair and waited for him to walk up a few more steps. She wrenched the door open, violently, and threw herself into the arms of her father, the father who's love is so trustworthy. She knew every time she leapt that her daddy would catch her, she didn't care that the stairs themselves were creaky and prone to breaking, nor did she stop to think about whether or not her daddy was going to catch her, she just trusted and leapt.

Once upon a time, I was talking with Jason Pastore. We were having a discussion about many things, in particular, how difficult it is to trust in what God's will is, and how hard it can be some time to discern what God's asking. He said, "John, sometimes you just have to jump and trust that God will catch you." How true, how simple, how beautiful. This leads me back to the quote above. As a senior in college, many of my class mates are beginning to stress out, over analyze everything, and question what they're going to do with their lives. The closer and closer I come to graduation, the more and more that I've come to realize that now, more than ever, I just need to love on God. If our love of God could only be like the love between Paul and his daughter. This unbreakable, deep, affectionate love manifests itself throughout day-to-day life for the George family. When was the last time that we could say that our love for God manifested itself throughout our day-to-day life? When was the last time that we simply jumped and trusted that God would catch us? He who loves, trusts. Beautiful.