Psalm 137:1 “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.”
Educational facilities from my grandsons’ daycare to the college where I teach are taking a hit from the coronavirus quarantine. Online learning helps fulfill requirements, but hopes of graduations, internships and athletic events lay in the unconsoling land of cancellations. Yet there’s one school, as my husband recently noted, that has not closed its doors. This school remains open through every imaginable crisis….
The school of trust. Whether we wanted to enroll or not, it’s a school we have all been thrust into these last few weeks.
Of course, trusting God in times of uncertainty is not new curriculum for believers. We became students of trust the moment we confessed Jesus as Lord. But what many of us didn’t realize was how the Holy Spirit would keep signing us up for advanced classes. He keeps presenting us with new opportunities to learn and to grow. Like now. Today’s challenges are no time to slack.
When Israel met the opportunity to advance in trust, I’m afraid that’s exactly what they did. They slacked. But it was their lack of trust that landed them as prisoners in a foreign land in the first place. As a nation they had compromised their allegiance to God by diluting their trust with idols. They soon lost their sensitivity for God’s goodness. Now, they sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered what they lost.
I’m not begrudging their grief. I’d cry, too. It’s calloused to look at the suffering and pain surrounding us and not grieve. And it’s tempting, like Israel, to focus on revenge toward our enemies (Ps 137:8-9). But bitterness and calls for revenge only increase our despair. The choice to trust God leads us out of our grief and restores our hope.
I recently learned a new word: opsimath. It refers to a person who began to learn or study late in life. In the confines of Babylon, God was giving Israel a new opportunity to become opsimaths in the field of trust. Maybe he is doing the same for us in this present crisis. Will we choose to open ourselves to learning new ways to trust God or will we stubbornly cling to our disappointments?
Some day we will all graduate. May it be with the high distinction as summa cum lades of trust.