February 14. Love Believes All Things

February 14. Love Believes All Things

The word ‘pisteuo’ means to believe or to trust.

I can still see myself in the living room.  I had done something so awful that Mom had given me the “I’m so disappointed in you” lecture.  I can’t remember any longer what I had done, but she ended her lecture by telling me that she could no longer trust me.  That one episode had destroyed all of the trust I had earned over the years.  As I fell apart into tears, I asked how we could get back to the place we had been before.  She told me that it would take time.

Well, just as she said, time passed and we got back onto an even keel and it didn’t come up again.

As humans, we easily get sidetracked from implicit trust.  We get angry, we are hurt, we believe that our hurt and anger justify the removal of trust.  It’s one of those things that by stating we no longer trust someone, we can ensure that they are now cowed by us.  We won’t trust them until they do a certain list of things to earn our trust back again.

Mom was angry and hurt and in her desire to punish me (oh, I’m sure I deserved it), she chose to remove something from our relationship.  I might have deserved that as well.  But, as I look back on that argument, it occurs to me that she really didn’t mean the words she said.  She didn’t remove all trust from me.  Say, for instance, that I hadn’t called to let her know where I was and where I was going.  That specific issue was something I needed to deal with.  She didn’t trust me to make that call because I had messed up – but, she still trusted me to do other things, such as obey her when she told me to do something; complete my homework on time and do well in school; practice the musical instruments so that I would do well; be at family meals; participate in the activities I was involved with; the list goes on and on.

No, she didn’t stop trusting me altogether.  She loved me.

Love trusts implicitly.  Love believes … always.

Jesus Christ is the epitome of this type of love.  You see, not only is He always worthy of our love, but He loves us without condition.  If we screw up, He doesn’t stop loving us and He will look beyond those mistakes to continue trusting us.

Love Trusts.  Love Believes.