Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Trust....huh?...what's that?

Who do you trust?

Oh my goodness...Brad has hit a home run with this post! You just have to find and spend the time to process what he's saying because it is foundational to what I've been (and will continue to be) talking about here.

Faith is impossible without trust. Covenant is based on trust between partners. Faithful cHesed is the day by day working out of the nitty-gritty details of that trust relationship. The "over my dead body" loyalty that is committed to being there for each other. The humility and repentance dedicated to repairing a trust that has been broken...because, honestly, we all break trust from time to time. There is no one who is completely faithful...no one but God.

Why it is that we are so shocked when we discover unfaithfulness in someone else? Perhaps there is a bit of projected relief that our shortcomings have mercifully not been publically aired.

Please notice the R2A2 label applied to this post....

In this time of gearing up for important elections, I have to really toughen up my gut...because the way the truth gets twisted and the incredible damage being done to my trust concerning all things political and governmental and institutional just makes me want to, well, PUKE! (Having just done a bit of that last weekend, it is a rather vivid image for me right now.)

The Abbess is so sick of self-righteous, self-serving, simplistic and disingenuous "indignation" from all corners of her reality that she will have to be very careful not to break her ruler across any errant knuckles that may happen to wave in front of her face like a red flag in a bull ring!

God have mercy on me as I desperately yearn to be found increasingly trustworthy as covenant partner and humble Messianic Hasidim.

...will you help me with the "specks" in my eyes? I promise to help you with yours. If I will remember to just keep my cHesed glasses ON, less of that junk will get into my eyes!

Create in me a clean heart, O Lord...and remind me to clean my glasses, too!

Be blessed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness is right! After reading his post this morning I had to email the link out to a bunch of friends.

AbiSomeone said...

I am so grateful for Brad...what a treasure he is to the Church!

Janet Woodlock said...

Gosh... this is deep... and wise!

Covenant is such a strong theme throughout the whole of scripture... a concept that is largely lost, replaced by the idea of legal arrangements. I've heard the Genesis story of Abraham making a blood covannt with God explained. The whole idea of cutting an animal in two and walking between the halves was that it symbolically represented: "may what has happened to this animal happen to me (and worse) if I break faith with you."

Within the West there's seems little loyalty in workplaces to staff, in marriages to spouses, in families, in networks of relationships... it's like a sign of the kingdom where we see covenantal faithfulness.

Leadership that fails to empower others isn't leadership at all... it's just use of power.

I see this post not only as insightful about the future, but also as deeply grounded in profound theological themes. It's wonderful.

Janet Woodlock said...

Oh, I "said" this on Brad's blog too in case it has different readership!

Anonymous said...

Ooh, Oooh, Peggy! I think I finally understand what you meant when it comes to being percieved by God vs. trying to percieve God. In Psalm 18 David says he always keeps God's precepts...Yea right brother! But David was right because he wasn't looking at his own perception of God, he was looking at how God percieves and sees him.

How totally cool!

Penney Winiarski

AbiSomeone said...

Janet...thanks for sharing! I am hoping to do my part in bringing covenant back to its proper place. How is it that such a central theme has been pushed to the side?

Well...I'll get into that a little bit at a time! Like I mentioned on Brad's blog: we both have a penchant for putting too much to process in a single post!

When I talk about restraint, I'm usually preaching to myself ;^)

AbiSomeone said...

Woo hoo, Penney!

I read your comment over at Brad's post...and I can see that you are really putting those pieces together. It is not our perceptions that are important...only our ability to perceive what God's perceives.

I pray daily that I may see more clearly through God's eyes than my own pathetic vision!

This is actually the first step in understanding cHesed--the giving up of the dependence on our own vision of reality so that we may embrace the beauty of God's vision of being there for each other.