It takes a lot to entrust someone with everything you are.
One of the most powerful moments in my relationship with my now-husband was the first time he cried in front of me. I fell deeply in love with him that night as I held him, not really knowing why he was breaking down but feeling deeply honored that he trusted me enough to fall apart in my arms. The vulnerability of that moment was only outshined by one thing: that intimacy of it. The trust he held in me after just a few weeks of dating linked my heart inexorably to his. That bridge of trust continues to grow in the years since.
Trust. That’s something God deeply wants us to have in Him. He wants us to believe that above everything else we could put our faith in, it’s Him who will save us. In the record of Ezra, the returning Jewish captives making the pilgrimage back to Jerusalem prayed and fasted for days for God’s protection through their journey, knowing that the many items of silver and gold they carried for the Temple would make them targets. And they did! But God saved them from enemies and ambushes along the way, and they arrived safely at their destination.
First and foremost, though, the People had to forego an escort from King Artaxerxes and trust wholly in God’s power to save them. That required so much trust—and God desires us to trust Him no less than they did!
When reading this psalm and mining for wisdom to write this blog, something really stayed with me that never had before: the parallel of this particular fragment with some of Jesus’ final words on the cross: Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. We’ve talked before about how Jesus quoted Psalm 22 on the cross, drawing the minds of his listeners to the Messianic parallel of that particular psalm; here again we see Jesus faithfully referring to the written Word, even as the giving of his last breath drew near. But what struck me this time around reading this passage was the verse that comes after the entrusting of the spirit: You redeem me, O Yahweh, God of faithfulness.
Just think about how much trust Jesus had to have held in those words. He entrusted his spirit to God, believing fully that his Father would redeem him no matter what—even from the death he was about to enter into.
Friends, that’s the kind of trust we need to cultivate. Jesus beckons us in his footsteps on the journey into God’s presence. To follow his example and be imitators, we must have that level of faith. We must commit our spirits—the very breath in our lungs!—into God’s hands and trust that He is faithful and will redeem us. What does redemption look like? We may not know, but we can trust it’s out there for us. We can trust God is faithful. And like Jesus, even if we are staring down the unimaginable with no other hope in sight, we must place our hope, our trust, our belief in God. When our spirits are committed to His care, that is when we are truly the safest of all.
