Praying with Big Magic: Trust
By Rev. Debra McKnight

Loving God,
You call us to Trust
but we have trust issues.

The church sings, “Trust and Obey”
But we know of wounds and worries,
heaps of hypocrisy and historic hostility.

The Church sings, “Standing on the Promises”
but is infamous at how many promises a group of ‘Nice Christians’ can break.

Humans are the worst, even Lover’s betray,
Leaving bad blood and the deepest cuts.

But the Psalmist sings, “Trust in the Lord”
Trust, Oh My God
How do we? How could we?
We open our eyes and fear is so reasonable.

Is trust blind or is it only found in a circle?
Does it require we fall in the arms of co-workers and classmates we just met?

Or can it be a little more nuanced and maybe a little more strong?

Is it only about trust in others or is it something we grow in ourselves?
Trusting the gifts and the graces we carry,
trusting our insights and tending our sparks
trusting our curiosity over our fear and gaining from pleasure rather than pain.

The Psalmist proclaims, "Trust in the Lord,”
Ancestors named their struggle, their pain, their grief,
their fabulous failures and total despair
and yet, in the mists of it all they held out hope,
singing, “Trust in the Lord.”

Trust in the love that knits us together
Trust in the grace that calls us to seek and forgive
discover and explore.

Trust in the practice and the lessons we learn, trust in our guts and our dreams
Trust in our boundaries, our insights and our deepest delights,
Trust in the Divine that sparks us to glean
from each epic fail or tragic fall
and loves beyond what success might mean and ego driven acclaim.

And so we pray, beyond our issues, betrayals and walls,
for your love that knits us all into the circle and makes us whole.

Trusting we are beloved, worthy no matter what measurements the world may take.
Trusting we are beloved, worthy no matter the score
Trusting we are beloved, no efforts or production required.

Trusting we are beloved,
because we are.

May it be so.
Amen.