A thought for the day from Jeremiah 17:7:
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD And whose trust is the LORD.”
As I read this verse, I pondered why Jeremiah put in both phrases: “who trusts IN the Lord” and “whose trust IS the Lord.” I thought of it this way: sometimes, when we put our trust IN the Lord, we subconsciously (or consciously) expect him to act in a certain way. In essence, we are saying, “I trust in the Lord to do this certain thing that I want.” But he doesn’t always do what we want – that’s a fact of life. If that’s as deep as our trust goes, our trust and faith are going to be shaken quite regularly.
That is why, I think, Jeremiah put in the second phrase: “whose trust IS the Lord.” When God does not DO the things I want or expect or desire, I need to trust who he IS: that is, his character and nature as loving, gentle, kind, just, purposeful, gracious, patient, etc. This is where we find unshakable trust and faith, no matter what happens, no matter what God does or does not do. We know that he works all things together for good, because he IS good. We know his actions, whatever they are, are loving because he IS love.
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