Trust is something that your mind searches out and your instincts test and confirm. You should pay attention when you have a sense of danger. When you become hyper alert and expand your visual attention to what’s before, behind, and beside you, it’s time to take a fine sieve to who and what you will allow to get close. When you see someone or something you trust, you think you can relax and let your guard down. Or can you?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust too many people. I don’t trust things or places – at all. I’m not paranoid, just been alive long enough to know better. I also had wise parents to taught me that I should carefully watch everything.
The flag that drapes a soldier’s coffin is a symbol of love, dedication, trust, & enormous sacrifice.
Lessons of Trust Are Taught by Parents
My father had a warrior spirit. He taught all his children how to detect and neutralize threats. The rural South in the 50s and 60s was a jungle of environmental and human threats. Skeeters, gnats, chiggers, poisonous snakes, segregation, Jim Crow laws, gators, and demon spirits were just some of the annoyances and threats we were given neutralization protocols that worked.
Trust Is Based on Experience
We listened to Dad, because he was a soldier. A survivor of Korea, World War II, Parris Island!, and the Marine Corps! It didn’t hurt that my father was known for his ability to handle firearms. We had a gun in every room, and Dad was always strapped. Always. Needless to say, fear of external harm wasn’t something we grew up with, because we trusted my Dad. We trusted, his knowledge and experience. Our experience was this: When Dad was around, trouble would have a hard time getting to us.
Don’t Put all Your Trust in People and Things. They Perish.
I never felt more vulnerable than when I saw my father’s flag draped coffin. I held my breath when the Marine Corps honor guard handed that folded flag to Mom. Yet, strangely, I never panicked after my father’s death. That was because of another lesson he taught: That God is our greatest protector, Who alone has the wisdom and power and might to deliver us from evil.
In God We Trust
It was God Who kept Dad safe in the foxhole, and three times allowed him to survive a sinking battleship. I’m glad Dad taught us to listen to God’s voice, and to call on Him in times of trouble. It is God, Who has guided, provided, and protected us through the years. He will keep me safe, even unto and beyond when it’s my time to cross over Jordan.
This Memorial Day, I thank my father, M/Sgt. Vernon Lights, USMC (retired), for being the kind of father I could trust, and for teaching his children how to trust God.
The word for today is #trust. Men, women, places and things, all fail. But God. Never. Fails. Praise Him!
In God, whose word I praise— in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
Psalm 56:4 NIV
Until next time: Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!
Your friend in Christ,
Verneda
Twitter handle: @vlights
