thought exercise on Trusting Others

Trust is sweet. It is better than gold. Trust is always a gift of the heart, and therefore it just may be the most precious thing in life, next to love. Trust between two people is so valuable and pre...

It was impossible for me (Doug) to become Mark’s friend. He always avoided eye contact with me though I would smile and say hi as I passed him in the dorm. I had no idea what was going on in his heart...

Did you hear about how, after Adam stayed out late a few nights, Eve became suspicious? “You’re running around with another woman— admit it!” she yelled. "What other woman?!” Adam was mystified. ...

To be nice means to silence ourselves in some way, and in doing so, we compromise our authenticity and give up freedom to act and speak. On the other hand, niceness may facilitate the shedding of resp...

Over the years, I’ve read about many leaders who failed ethically in their leadership. Can you guess what they had in common? They all thought it could never happen to them. There was a false sense of...

What does it look like to trust in God? And how does trusting in God relate to all of the modern technologies that currently exist. We know, quite well, that for some quite close to us, technology is ...

We may find it hard to believe Jeremiah’s words that the heart is “deceitful above all things.” We would rather look outward and think, Yes, others may be quite foolish and misguided. But I have a ...

When we speak of Christian living as a learned craft, we have a particular image in mind, that of an apprentice serving for years under the tutelage of a master. This is what my (Rich) grandfather did...

Let’s say I interviewed ten people, asking each the same question—“Do you trust God?”—and each answered, “Yes, I trust God,” but nine of the ten actually did not trust him. How would I find out which ...

Michael Polanyi brilliantly points out that we cannot doubt something without simultaneously trusting in something else. Eve began to doubt God—more importantly her relationship with God—at the same m...

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father. For him it has both charm and fascination. Among his countless children, whom he so greatly loves and whom ...

We were created to communicate, to speak truth fully to one another, so that we might be members of one another. To be members of one another means we must learn to trust one another. Trust, like trut...

What I’ve found through research is that trust is built in very small moments, which I call “sliding door” moments, after the movie Sliding Doors. In any interaction, there is a possibility of connect...

A monk told his monastic leader, Poeman, “I am troubled in spirit, and I want to leave this place.” The old man said, “Why?” He said, “I have heard unedifying stories about one of the brothers. The...

God wants to feed his people. In keeping the one tree from them, God protected Adam and Eve. When they broke table fellowship with God, they suspected that God was withholding something good, that thi...

Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca...

Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of se...

In my lifetime, the classic image of the devoted parish pastor who could be trusted to rightly preach the word, diligently care for souls, and wisely lead the church has shifted dramatically. With maj...

When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...

I remember once near Interlaken waiting for days to see the Jungfrau which was hidden in mists. People told me it was there, and I should have been a fool to doubt their word, for those who told me li...

Ruut Veenhoven, the Dutch sociologist known as the “godfather of happiness research,” maintains the World Database of Happiness. And when he looked at all the countries of the world in terms of happin...

Tolerating absence is, in essence, trusting presence—even when the one who is present to us is not physically present. Think of the two-year-old gradually loosening his clinging grasp to the leg of hi...

Do not be anxious about anything,” says Scripture (Phil. 4:6). The problem is: this makes us anxious! We have enough things to be anxious about already in life, and now we have to worry in addition ab...

George Herbert Mead, an influential early 20th-century sociologist, coined the term “generalized other” to describe the vague group we consider when shaping our actions. How often do we behave a certa...

In The Chimes, the second of Charles Dickens five Christmas stories, nine-year old Lillian Fern, orphaned and under the guardianship of her father’s brother Will, is taken in for the night by Tobias (...

Ken Sande, the author and director of Peacemaker Ministries, puts it this way: “How do you want others to judge you? Do you want them to believe good about you instead of evil? To interpret your a...

There is a story of a medieval monk who was being unjustly accused of certain offenses. One day he looked out his window and saw a dog biting and tearing on a rug that had been hung out to dry. As he ...

If you’ve ever run a business or led a team of people, you know what it’s like to send someone in your place. You know they’re going to interact with a person who might not know you, and that person w...

In the [Roman] catacombs, we are told, explorers take a thread with them through all the dark passages and tortuous windings, and by this thread they find their way back again to the light. There is s...

In his introduction to Scott Sauls’ Book, Irresistable Faith, Bob Goff tells a story about a summer adventure hitchhiking across New England, which would ultimately lead to staying with a hermit in Ma...