When the world around us changes, we all plagued by feelings of insecurity. It is essential that all human beings have something or someone we can put our trust in, to be able to function well. As small children, for most of us, our parents fulfilled that role; it is so sad when children do not experience a parent’s love. As we grow into adulthood the only one we trust is number one, secure in our abilities to protect and provide for ourselves and those we love. It is at times like now that we realise that depending just on ourselves means in turn being critically dependent on the environment around us. Without all the trappings of a modern society, most of us would suffer extreme anxiety as we found the foundations of our faith crumbling away.
In the current crisis we have not reached the point of disintegration, and we pray fervently that we will not; but this is a good time to ask ourselves, is there somewhere else where we can put our trust to be assured that we are ultimately secure? Christians believe that the God who created the universe loves us as a parent loves their children. That is why Jesus taught us to call him ‘Father’. It is not retreating into childhood to put our faith in him now, but is realising the lessons most of us learnt at an early stage are meant to stick for the rest of our lives. This the way God made us: the best way to live our lives is to put our ultimate security in him, so that whatever the world throws at us we can live with the firm foundation of his love.
This is not a physological placebo, like a child’s security blanket, which is only there to help the child feel secure. Children’s real security is in their parents. The faith we put in God is also real, as billions of people have found, down through the centuries. God desires above all for us to be in a parent-child relationship with him, so he encourages us to seek him in prayer. Jesus told a story about a son who walked away from his father, who later welcomed him back when the son reached the end of his resources. You can read this in the Bible in Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 15 verses 11-32. If you pray, even with a tiny seed of faith, God will come out to meet you, like the father in Jesus’ story, and he will give you that firm foundation that all of us need.
We do need to continue to trust and urgently put into practice the advice given to us by our politicians, doctors and scientist; but for that ultimate security, the only place for our faith is God alone.