Trust

Recently, following a meeting, a young man approached me. I have met this young man several times but he doesn’t ever seem to remember me. He motioned me to follow him out of ear shot of the rest of the group, so I followed him. He wanted to know more about one of the activities at the Church. About that time one of the people responsible for the activity walked by and I tried to introduce the two. The young man was more interested in discussing it with me; I thought because he knew who I was. It was not long before he confessed that he had been very nervous about coming and asking about the activity as he had really wanted to talk with the pastor of the church about the activity yet had gotten really nervous about talking to the pastor.

This evening I was with a different group. We were in a parking lot and needed a boost to get our vehicle started. The problem was that there were not many cars in the parking lot, and very few people seemed to be heading to a vehicle. I saw a lady with a young girl getting into an SUV. I called out to the lady and asked if she wouldn’t mind giving our vehicle a boost. She looked at me a little distrustfully and said, “I am really sorry, I don’t know how to do that, and would really prefer not to…” Now I don’t really blame this lady for not helping us. She was just trying to get her little one and herself into their vehicle and head home. The way she had looked at our group and especially at me, there seemed to be some distrust in her eyes.

It’s easy to say someone shouldn’t be nervous talking to me. When I look in the mirror the last thing I see is someone who evokes nervousness or distrust in others. I see someone who should be easy to talk to, someone who is worthy of placing trust in. Unfortunately, that is not how everyone else sees me. I hope that those that know me well see me this way, and I hope that those who don’t know me can see through my faults and see the me that is in there somewhere.… But we know ourselves, we know our friends. Others don’t, and most of us have grown up being taught to distrust strangers.

We often fear what we don’t know. I didn’t know the young man at the meeting very well, and I admit I was a little afraid of what he wanted to ask me. I had never seen the lady in the parking lot before and probably never will again, but I was a little hesitant to approach her to ask for help. I was even about to stop one of our group from approaching a foreign looking and sounding man. Yet it was this stranger who took of his own time to help us out of our predicament.

We can’t control how others perceive us. We can’t control if a stranger trusts us or not. We can however, act towards others how we hope to be treated. When someone needs help, you can stop to see what you can do for them. As difficult as it might be, trust someone who hasn’t earned your trust. We all find ourselves at times in different places with people we don’t know. In those times when we need help, we hope someone will come to our aid. We need to extend help to those who find themselves in a different place with unfamiliar people, to be the answer to their prayer, their hope in flesh, offering hands and feet to help…