Jeremiah 17:5 “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.”
Has someone let you down? Rejected you? Falsely accused you? Unless you’ve opted for living in an isolated cave in Crete, you know what it’s like to be disappointed by other people. Seems to be one of the marks of a fallen world. People hurt us and as much as we try not to, we hurt other people. What was God thinking when he made us capable of inflicting so much pain on one another?
“Without pain, there is no love,” says novelist Irving Stone. God created us to experience the ecstasy of life but when sin entered, we became acquainted with the agony part. So how do we respond when people we love disappoint us?
Jeremiah told the Israelites those who trusted in man were cursed. But isn’t trust the foundation of any meaningful relationship? Don’t we usually trust people we love? The problem lies in how we trust. The “trust in man” Jeremiah refers to is trust that draws its strength more from people than from God. When we trust even the “sweetest frame” more than Jesus, we set ourselves up for disappointment. And the pain of our disillusionment drags us away from the only One worthy of our full trust.
No one loved people more than Jesus. “But Jesus didn’t trust them, because he knew human nature” (John 2:24 NLT). When those most dear to him dropped the ball and deserted him in his hour of greatest need, he didn’t go into a corner and have a pity party. He continued to love them because he didn’t have an unrealistic expectation of who they were in the first place.
Being disappointed in other people’s behavior is unavoidable. But reacting to the hurt by withholding our love from them is not. When we trust the Lord to turn even our most bitter disappointments into something good in us, the pain will fade and what really matters will remain.
Yes. God knew what he was doing when he made us. He created us to engage with each other—and in the process learn how to love like he does. It’s a far better option than living alone in a cave in Crete.