Jeremiah 17:7: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.”
In 1999 our family vacationed on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It happened to be the year the infamous CapeHatteras lighthouse was being moved. The tallest brick lighthouse in the United States at two hundred feet, beach erosion over its almost 130 years of existence was threatening its future survival. Its relocation was a monumental task, to say the least.
Each day hydraulic jacks were used to slowly lift and carry the lighthouse twenty-five to one hundred feet until it would be newly situated about 3,000 feet inland. Slowly is the operative word. We would go to the site, and no matter how much we stared at that lighthouse, we couldn’t see it move an inch! Only when we returned later in the day or the next morning and viewed it relative to a fixed landmark, could we tell it had actually moved.
The transfer of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse makes me think of trust. When we encounter situations requiring us to wait on God’s timing, we often see no outward movement. We’ve prayed, yielded, maybe even cried and begged, still it appears nothing is happening. Trust, however, tells us something is happening. It assures us that in spite of what we don’t see, movement steadily creeps along.
Trust always involves waiting, for it is in the waiting that we either water the seedbed of trust or let our faith shrivel up. Trusting necessitates that we “stop gazing at the lighthouse” and look at the “fixed landmark.” A landmark that is the same yesterday, today and forever. What we know about the immoveable, unshakeable, eternal character of God determines whether or not we learn to trust more.