Trust is work. It does not come easy. Whoever tries to convince you otherwise has little faith and I believe that wholeheartedly.

To live a life of gratitude, of thankfulness and joy – those are the conduits that produce trust. But – not just any trust. A trust in a loving, sovereign God who has never failed. To say He never will fail is right and good, but we cannot put our trust in a God who never will fail unless we have first seen that He never has failed. We must utilize a trust that is deliberate and focused on this loving God that turns evil into good. A God that paints a rainbow in a dark, cloudy, drippy sky and calls it a promise. A God that painfully watches His son nailed to a cross and calls it redemption for an undeserving people.

Yet, why is our first and foremost, our fastest reaction – worry? Fear? Is it something we have learned in the classroom of Life-Lessons On Trust and yet because we somehow missed the first class, and to trust first never seemed to make sense? Why have we so easily learned the sin of stress over the treasure of trust? And someone tell me – why is it so doggone easy to fret and choose failure over faith?

I sit at the airport and watch the planes take off and land and I wonder – how many people on Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, were fretting when Todd Beamer stated, “Let’s roll!”? They had a mission. They could have been filled with fear and yet, I honestly believe they were filled with courage in those final moments. There is no room for fear in courage and they were filled with a courage that charged against the demons of darkness that desperately tried to steal their faith and keep them huddling in their fear. Instead, they gripped that fear by the horns, cast it furlong into a field of thistles and thorns and millions called it good while at the same time mourning those who trusted in a higher and a greater cause.

Imagine a faith – a supernatural courage that can come from a life who is trusting in a superior, infinite, and sovereign God who has spent an eternity blessing His children (even though they have lived oblivious to that goodness). Imagine what can happen when they begin to catch a glimpse of the small. The once mundane that now has become magnificent. No – miraculous. Imagine when they don’t merely notice, but voice their thankfulness – their gratitude for the gifts they now receive.

It is when we begin to search for the little things that we begin to see the little things are not so very little. What once I walked past in ignorance (yes, ignorance) – the delicateness of nature, the complexities of creation, and the exquisiteness of life itself – it now shouts out in celebration of its very wonder. Why? Because I have begun to look for not just the little things in life that hold that incredible wonder, but all things. And… give thanks.

Could it be that when we look for all things in which to express gratitude that we find a plethora of ‘things’ in which to give thanks, we begin to develop a life of thanksgiving? For, it is in that very smallness that thanksgiving breeds joy and joy reels in anxiety and worry. The smallness dissipates doubt. It casts light upon the darkness and whispers ‘Live in this moment.’ It speaks, ‘Choose joy.’

Truth is the beginning of trust. They are built upon the same principal – putting faith in a loving God. A loving God who has proven He is trustworthy. He has proven it with a rainbow, a burning bush, a cross. When we can see those things – really see them – then we can and will unabashedly give thanks. And thanksgiving will produce joy.

That’s the truth. And the truth sets people free. Free to see. Free to live the way we were meant to live. Without fear. Full of joy.

- Sherri