1. Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2. Confident expectation of something; hope.
“We trust in Jesus Christ…” so opens the first article of A Brief Statement of Faith, from our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA). Those who are used to the Apostles’ Creed will notice that this faith statement uses “we” instead of “I” and “trust” instead of “believe.”
“Trust” has a different connotation than “believe.” We use the latter to mean that we intellectually agree to certain tenants of doctrine. It’s good to believe in God and to believe in people. May we continue to strive for belief in our faith journeys.
We use “trust” in many more ways in our daily lives. A trustee is someone we trust with a task or with a possession. To say we trust someone is to rely on them, as the definition indicates above. Trust is active and concrete. If we trust someone with our lives, we could not live without them.
In our faith lives, trust is something we continually cultivate. As soon as we release control of a prayer concern and trust God completely with the outcome, something else comes up we want to control. Again and again, we learn to trust God in everything.
What makes it hard for us to trust? For us followers of Christ, what’s the opposite of trust? Fear is the opposite of trust. Control is the opposite of trust. Greed is the opposite of trust. As with the manna in the wilderness, the Israelites could not gather more than their share for the day. They had to trust it would be there in the morning.
The second definition of trust above is “Confident expectation of something; hope.” May this be our mantra this Advent season as we wait for the coming of Christ. May we wait in “confident expectation” of God’s presence with us, trusting that Christ will indeed come, that he will indeed change the world and change our lives forever.