Sky falling? Turn to God

We all know the story of “Chicken Little”, don’t we? Something fell on him and immediately he starts crying out that the sky is falling. We walk into a building and we are confident that the roof will not fall on us. Confidence requires trust that something will or will not take place.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 1, Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” What does this mean to trust in God, to trust in Jesus? Does this mean every time we have a headache we should trust in God to take it away? When our financial needs exceed our means, should we trust in Jesus to take care of these bills? A loved one falls into a fatal illness, and we pray for God to rescue him or her from certain death. And when God fails to fulfill these needs of the moment, do we lose our confidence in Him, do we stop trusting in God to take care of us?

So when God says we are to trust in Him, what exactly is He talking about? He follows this statement in verse 2: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.“

I used to do a lot of business traveling. I would travel to a city where I had never been to before, and I would get into a taxi and tell the driver to take me to the Holiday Inn. I didn’t know where it was, but I trusted in the taxi driver to get me there. And when I arrived at the Holiday Inn, they would take me to the room that had been reserved for me. I didn’t have to know anything about getting to that room, I trusted in others to get me there.

In the same way Jesus is telling us to trust God, to trust in Him to get us to his heavenly kingdom, to His mansion that has been reserved for us. We don’t have to know how to get there, we only have to have confidence that Jesus knows the way, and we trust in Him to get us safely there.

And we know how He gets us there. We are sinners and deserve punishment for our sins. We deserve to be eternally separated from God. But God has forgiven our sins by sacrificing His own Son for us on the cross. Jesus died, paying the penalty we deserve, He died in our place that God the Father might forgive us for our sins. God has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

And as Jesus rose in victory over death and ascended back to his heavenly kingdom, we place our confidence in this event as proof that there is life after this world, that when we die we will rise in victory over death to live with Jesus in His mansion that has been prepared for us. We don’t trust in our own abilities to get to heaven, instead we place all our confidence in what Jesus has done for us.

Like Chicken Little we may not know why the world has hit us with the problems we have, we may have trouble dealing with the difficulties we have at the present time, but we have God’s assurance that our present difficulties will not last forever, that God will see us safely through this world until we are called out of this world. He doesn’t promise to heal us when we are sick, He doesn’t promise to take care of our financial needs, but He does promise to give us the strength needed to live with these problems, knowing that our earthly problems will not last forever, and that there is a wonderful reward waiting for us when we place our confidence in Jesus Christ to see us safely home with Him forever.

Yes, the sky may be falling on us. At such times God calls us to turn to Him, in confidence that He will give us the strength to get through tough times, with the promise of an eternal rest to come.