Innocence and Total Trust

While watching the end of a movie last night, my wife and I received a text from our youngest daughter in Oklahoma requesting us to take a look at their Christmas photos that she and her boyfriend had just uploaded to Facebook.  We slowly uncoiled ourselves from our snug places on the couch and from the dog sleeping luxuriously between us and made our way back to the study.  As the pictures came up on her Facebook page, we began to enjoy all the shots of my daughter, her close, special friend, our youngest son and a friend of his, as they posed around the decorated home.  

Our daughter had planned for this occasion for weeks.  She prepared an exquisite meal of steak, fresh green beans and my mother’s old Italian special recipe of potato gnocchi with a fresh basil pesto sauce.  The pictures ranged from the standard views of the various individuals posing on the couch, to the young men making humorous faces and finally to the unwrapping of the Christmas presents.  It looked to have been a fun and memory filled celebration of our children’s second Christmas away from home.  My wife and I laughed at the different scenes and I wrote back silly comments which my daughter and I bantered back and forth with by texting on our phones.  It was a great experience that just made my day!

This morning as I thought about the photos, I began to realize what was so special about  them.  The event that they captured was an expression of young innocence and total trust.  There was expectancy written all over their faces.  They had planned for a special, fun time and received exactly what they had expected!  The night and day that the photos  recorded were completely void of worries and cares.  There was a peace and joy present in that home that literally leaped from those photos taken 1800 miles away from our home in California.  Nothing else mattered to them at that time, because they knew in Whom they trusted.

This immediately brought me back to the reaction of the young teenage girl that was presented with an outrageous announcement over 2000 years ago in the Galilean town of Nazareth.  This event would totally unravel her life as she had known it, and had probably planned it for the future.  But while she questioned the mechanics of event, she readily accepted her role with complete innocence and trust in her God.  Her response to the Angel was simply: “I am the Lord’s servant.  Let everything you’ve said happen to me.”  (Luke 1:38 God’s Word©)  She later went on to sing her praises to God, amplifying her complete trust in the One that enlisted her for the assignment.

My children and their friends, just like Mary, have many trying things that they are dealing with in life.  Being away from home, finishing school, jobs, making major decisions that will affect their entire lives and so on, but do they allow those daily issues to rob them of their joy of life?  No!  Why? Because they have an innocent and total trust in that same foundation that my wife and I have.  Do they have situations and thoughts that work to bring them down, you bet, but they do not give more than a few moments of attention to them, choosing instead to seek the guidance of their foundation and replace the attacking fears with a solid faith in the One they have come to personally know as faithful and true (see Revelation 19:11).

No matter you age or your place in life, this is a major key to living your daily life successfully, with an expectancy of good things happening for you.  Remember this is the week to begin to set the milestones for your life in 2011.  Stay tuned, and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?”