Multiple times today I ran across a situation where I could see someone who was coming from a place of low trust. They were stuck. It wasn't a good place for them. You felt sorry for them and wanted to see them get unstuck.

It reminded me of a friend who loved a girl. She got so
tired of waiting year after year for him to pull the trigger that she
eventually married another guy. I don't know if he ever got over that. Trusting again has been hard.

Who knows why a given person ends up that way. But everyone has been burned. It's normal to have your trust broken. Some move on and some keep looking over their shoulder. The scenes of what happened to hurt them keep playing in their minds. The place of low trust comes to define them.

They come to a conclusion and make a decision.

"Trusting was hard and I got burned. The only way to avoid that kind of pain is to not trust again, so I'm not going to any more."

Of course Jesus began his ministry with a discourse on taking the opposite tack. "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well." His point was to let God sort out the issues of justice and to not be so concerned with broken trust. If you really look at the sermon on the mount, Jesus said some crazy, hard-to-swallow stuff.

I don't know where you come from, but I've taken those situations where I got burned and tried to do what doesn't come naturally. When I've been betrayed, I've sought to forgive the person right away. When a big risk blows up in my face, I regroup and find a way to risk again.

The best things in my life have required buckets of trust. My marriage, my friendships, my ministry, my faith. And yes, I've been burned. But I've also seen miracles! Trusting God when it doesn't make sense seems to delight him.

How do you do at trusting people? What kind of place do you come from? We all have reasons not to trust, but life is happier when we leave them behind.