Overcoming Troubles

When Jesus spoke those so often quoted words, "Let not your hearts be troubled..." (John 14:1), He must have been seeing faces that were stressed with anxiety.  The lighthearted days of beginning the journey were far in the past and in the moments of Him speaking this word, life was filled with foreboding.  Each disciple who looked at Jesus that day surely knew the gravity of the day.  The antagonists who had always lurked in the shadows were now boldly armed and threatening with the weapons of the status quo.  It was a dangerous time.  They knew it.  Jesus knew it.  It was  a trouble they could not hide.   

Jesus could not erase the trouble, or at least He was choosing not to do so.  What He did do was point them toward the cure for their trouble.  The word He spoke was no new word from Him for them.  "Let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in me."  The word which He offered to them as something which could handle the trouble of the present moment was trust in Him.  He challenged them to continue believing and depending upon Him and everything He had said to them in the easy moments of life even though there was nothing easy about the present condition of their life.  Trust in God is always the opposite of worry.  

To be consumed with trouble created worry is the opposite of faith.  Faith and trust is about abandoning everything even all the emotional mechanisms upon which we so casually depend when life seems manageable.  Worry is caused by the troubles that want to take root in our heart.  Jesus saw the disciples looking more at the darkness of the troubles of their lives than Him.  His gentle word to them and us on that day from so long ago is indeed the word we are called to embrace as we seek to live fully midst the troubles which confront us.  Trust.  A simple but powerful word.  Trust in Jesus.  It is the way to overcome troubles.