Be Careful Where You Place Your Trust

We place our trust in Doctors, Electricians, Bricklayers, Professionals of all kinds, Courts, Politicians, Partners, Teachers. The list goes on forever. We place our trust in people as we must to survive.

We place our trust in technologies too. Computers, wi fi, smart phones, chemical and photographic analysis. We trust what advance technology shows as being as accurate as our interpretation is significant.

We humans today are as faith based as we have ever been. This is true in spite of the fact that studies show a rapidly falling drop of interest in matters of religion and faith.

The difference between past generations and our generation today is simply where we place trust. Trust of course, is just another word for faith.

We place our trust, our faith in animate and inanimate objects. The greatest defect throughout history including our immediate history, is the momentum to place trust squarely and purely in ourselves. Do that and we are certain to fail. This is not a subjective statement. It is written throughout all human history and in every human life.

Be careful where you place your trust. We of course, should trust in our ability to grow knowledge, analyze, achieve great things in life. But how we accomplish the greatness and what we conclude as greatness are dependent on life principles.

Guiding life principles do not just ‘well up’ from inside of us. We gain wisdom from the journey in life as much as we learn from the experience of others around us. The concept of God pushes us way, way beyond ourselves. There is a great Teacher out there who we call God! It is an ancient vocabulary anchored in wisdom beyond our personal experience alone. It has no equal.

Lets put this another way. The journey of life provides the opportunity to attain excellence. Stop along the way and we attain only what we find at the ‘rest stop’. The temptation is to stop along the way and conclude this is all that life offers. It is a resignation to be content for contentment sake. Stop the journey and you never know what can be accomplished ahead, what you can become.

Jesus talked about trust and faith from a deeper perspective. He said ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to God but through me.’ Some find this statement to be arrogant. An eyebrow lifter, too narrow and frankly too egocentric for our modern, advanced era.

Jesus’ words sound too much like the language we use everyday. I am going to do life MY way. Not YOUR way. Jesus is saying ‘My’ way and ‘your’ way alone won’t get us where we want to go in life. The ‘way, the truth and life’ requires a particular way.

Everyone who writes about achievement and excellence in life say words very similar to what Jesus said. It is simply this: You must focus on one way and one encompassing goal to attain excellence in life.

You want to be a pianist? Better focus on playing the piano not the guitar, Want to be a mechanic? Better focus on mechanics not landscaping. Want to drive to Los Angeles? Better focus on one route. You can’t take every road to get there. Want to live a principled life? Better practice the great principles of life and not the sloth of mediocrity. You cannot attain excellence by sowing seeds of greatness in all directions.

Life today is filled with multiple diversions in innumerable areas. We are encouraged and tempted to live lives that follow the diversions that take us nowhere in particular. Mediocrity and complacency to accept what we find around us never leads to contentment nor happiness in life. That’s just how it is. We need to place our trust, our faith in something greater than ourselves.

Jesus’ point is appropriately clear. Want to attain the excellence of a spirit and trust filled life? Better focus on one direction, one great faith to attain it. You can’t focus on all things and all faiths and all ways simultaneously. Life goes nowhere without a focus.

Vince Lombardi is frequently quoted as saying: “Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” He surely had it right. He took the words right out of Jesus’ mouth! Throw me the ball, Vince. I want to start playing the game to catch excellence.