A Couple of Trains and a Lesson on Trust

During my morning run, I stopped to take a few photos while on a bridge over the Mystic River. While taking a photo, I noticed an orange line train crossing another bridge over the Mystic. Then I saw another coming from the opposite direction. They were heading toward each other.

In this photo, if you look really closely, you can see the two trains heading toward each other just as they are about to...

Okay, let's be real. We all know that these trains were not going to crash. They were on different tracks. Although I knew they weren't going to crash, I couldn't help but think about how they looked like they could.

As I continued running, a couple thoughts came to mind which both ultimately teach a lesson about trust. I want to share those thoughts with you now.

1. Trust the Conductor

The trains looked like they could have crashed from where I was standing. But there were conductors on board each train who knew that they were on the right track, so they knew they wouldn't crash. And it's unlikely that anyone on the train even realized there was another train until it was passing. It's also unlikely that anyone worried that they were going to crash. Why? They trusted the conductors.

God always knows what is best for us. He is our great Conductor, guiding us along the right train tracks. And while trains really can crash and train conductors can make mistakes, God is perfect. We can always be confident and know that He will take good care of us.

But sometimes, we think we can figure things out better than God, our Creator, can. We think that our plans will be better than God's plans. We think the other set of train tracks look better. So we switch to the other tracks and...CRASH! We make choices every day. But we need to make sure that the choices we're making are according to God's will and plan for our lives. We need to trust Him!

Did you know there's potentially another problem with going against God's will? Think about it...if we're doing the wrong things, then perhaps whatever we're doing was meant for someone else. Our plans crash into each other. For example:

We want Job A. But God knows that Job 1 would be better for us. We still decide to go with Job A because we think it will be better. We trust ourselves over God. Now we're doing Job A (which won't be as good for us as Job 1) and the person who should be doing Job A is left to look elsewhere.

Maybe it's not that drastic...but maybe it is. Regardless, our decisions have consequences: some good, some bad. And sometimes those consequences impact other people.

So, we should always want what God wants for us. It has been my experience that when I have had a plan for something and God has led me a different way, I have always ended up looking on it (whether sooner or later) realizing that God's way was the better way.

We need to trust God as He leads us.

2. God's Perspective is Perfect

Another thought I had was about perspective. From my perspective, it looked like the trains could have crashed. The problem was that my perspective didn't have all the facts and information available to it. There were different sets of tracks on that bridge, but I couldn't see them.

That's a problem with perspective: we don't always have the best one. In fact, we really never have the perfect perspective. How often have we held an opinion about something or made a decision about something only to learn later that we were operating with the wrong perspective. But God does have a perfect perspective! Always!

God has all the information, all the details. He sees and knows everything. I don't. So His perspective of any situation is the perfect one. I would rather trust His perfect perspective over my imperfect one. He sees the big picture. He knows what we need and when.

Trust God

We can't steer our own train. We don't have a perfect perspective. The solution to each fact is the same: we need to trust God!

We are so grateful to those who have taken time to pray for us as we have been walking through this transition. Thank you so much if you have prayed for us. We spent the last 3 days of focused prayer asking God to answer some specific prayers. Last night as I was praying for the final time during the 3 days of focused prayer, I felt like the Lord put something on my heart: that we need to just trust Him because He knows what we need and when. He will take care of us. He has the answers. I felt such a peace.

As I was running today, before I even came upon the trains, I kept singing a line from a song (not even a Christian one) over and over again: "When one door closes, I pray one more opens." I was thinking about how we need to accept God's answer, even when it's a "No" and He closes a door. Because I know that He will open a different door will will prove to be better in the end.

So we don't have all the answers to our requests from the past 3 days. But we know that when God gives us the answers, they will be the right ones. We will trust Him!