Our Lady of Grace Parish, Parkton

Trust Walk

Have you ever heard of a trust walk?

This is sometimes part of a retreat especially for our teens. What happens in a trust walk is that the teens are paired off.

In each pair, one of them is blindfolded and the other is the leader. The leader leads the blindfolded partner maybe through the aisles and rows of seats in a church or outside around a property or something like that.

The challenge is for the leader to guide the other teen only by words and not by physical touch. And, of course, the challenge is to get the person being led to go through the entire walking course without bumping into anything and definitely without getting hurt.

The challenge for the one being led is to trust. They need to trust that the leader is guiding them well and won’t let anything bad happen.

For teens especially, this is usually a fun activity and a good learning experience.

Scripture and Trust

I am recalling the Trust Walk because of one of the themes in today’s Scripture readings.

In the first reading, a widow gives something to eat to the Prophet Elijah. She does this even though she has practically nothing left for herself and her son.

In the gospel, another widowed woman puts two coins into the Temple treasury. Jesus remarks that she “contributed all that she had.”

The underlying point in both of these stories is trust. Both of these women trusted in God and then acted out of that trust.

Our Trust

The dictionary defines trust as relying on the character, strength, ability, or truth of someone.

Trust is part of our faith. We are to trust that God is with us with his love and forgiveness regardless of what we have done.

We are to trust that God is with us no matter what is happening to us, like sickness or anxiety or grief. This trust does not mean that we believe that things will quickly be easy or comfortable.

But it does mean that we believe that God is always here with us and caring for us. It means that we believe that in some way good can come from evil and life can come from suffering and even from death.

One Recommendation: Commend

I want to offer one simple recommendation.

In the official Night Prayer of our Church, there is this one-sentence prayer: “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.”

“Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.” It is a prayer of trust.

We commend or entrust ourselves to God. I recommend that we make this our Night Prayer or at least part of our night prayer.

Maybe even make it a prayer at the beginning of the day. It is a prayer of trust: “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.”