Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
he’s the one who will keep you on track. – Proverbs 3:5-6 (The Message)
I love being a dad. Playing with my boy is one of the coolest things ever. I get to see life through the his eyes. I get to marvel at things just like he does. That included freaking out a little bit when he started climbing the furniture. We knew it was coming, but it still took us by surprise when he would yell across the house for help because he had climbed up on his changing table and couldn’t get down. That seems like forever ago.
Marixa sent me a picture once while I was at work. She came into our bedroom and this boy was scaling the front of our dresser like an expert climber scales a cliff. He must have been two years old. He decided that he wanted the remote control for the TV and nothing was going to deter him from getting it. The remotes were over 5 feet off the ground. I remember it made me laugh.
Along with climbing he started playing a new game: jump and let daddy catch me. He would climb up on a steamer trunk that we had in our living room, make sure I am in position, and the fling himself off of it as best he could. (At that point He hadn’t quite figured out how to jump yet, but throwing himself he had gotten quite good at.)
He did this repeatedly. Climb up, smile, fling himself into my arms, laugh and do it all over again. It was often a highlight of my day because I knew that my son trusted me to catch him. He still knows to this day that his daddy won’t let him fall.
I remember a cruise we went on when he was one. We found ourselves on a beach in Progresso on the Yucatan peninsula in southern Mexico. It was his first trip to the beach. He loved it. He played in the water, ate some sand (gross, but true), and hung out in the water with me and Marixa and our friends who we were traveling with.
I was playing with him in the ocean and began to toss him up into the air. He squealed with delight. The higher I tossed him the harder he laughed. I tossed him up until my shoulders got too tired. He absolutely loved it. Just like later when he would jump off the table, he knew that his daddy would catch him and everything was ok.
The part my boy didn’t know is that his daddy helped control the circumstances. I wouldn’t let him jump to me from just anything because I wanted to ensure that I could catch him. When I tossed him up in the air I made sure not to toss him higher than I could have compensated for on the ground. While he trusts me, I am constantly working to keep and enlarge that trust. I don’t want to let him fall or let him down. It is just not an option.
In the same way, we have a Heavenly Father who is in control of all of the circumstances. The bible tells us that all things work together for the good of those who love God. It doesn’t say that all things are going to be easy, but it does say it works for our good. We have a Father that we can trust. When we trust him and jump to him and he will catch us. He won’t let us fall.
So, why do we have such a hard time trusting him with our lives? Why do we fight so hard to stay in control? I don’t have an answer to those questions, but I do know this: If My boy can trust me to catch him, I can trust God to catch me. He loves me and he wants the best for me. No, jumping is not easy, but trusting is a choice. I don’t have to understand it. If I know God wants me to jump, I choose to trust. I know He will catch me.
David Willis 