Ruthless Trust

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning speaks of a man named John Kavanaugh, a brilliant man who went to work for three months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta. John Kavanaugh went seeking a clear answer to how best spend the rest of his life. On the first morning, there in the gutters of Calcutta, John met Mother Theresa. She asked him, “What can I do for you?” He paused to think and then asked if she would pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she wondered. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: “Pray," he said, "that I have clarity.” She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” Her abrupt response took him back. When he asked why not, she told him, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Mr. Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the kind of clarity he longed for, she laughed out loud and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing. Most of us know more than what we will ever put into practice, we’ve got enough insights to last a hundred years. What we lack is trust. We lack the courage to take the next step that is in front of us. We want the whole picture, the entire road map, we want to see the final destination and all the turns we will take to get there. Like John Kavanaugh, we are addicted to clarity but what we need is to trust…childlike trust in the Father’s active goodness and unrestricted love.

Brennan Manning wisely points out that when we trust we often do so with a bit of an agenda, presuming that our trust will result in God dispelling our confusion, illuminating the darkness, and clearing all uncertainty. Hebrews 11 reminds us that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity to our circumstances. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46).