Jennifer Knapp has a sweet song based on Psalm 20:7… It’s a great song but the verse is a super IMPORTANT reminder. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”

Replace chariots and horses with all kinds of things. Money, science, insurance, police… Whatever it is it may displease God if it is disproportionate.

Moving to the 3rd world has left us with a lot less to trust in. Don’t get me wrong I certainly haven’t gotten over my 30+ years of being conditioned to believe that my challenges are someone else’s responsibility but it is a start.

I was having a conversation the other day about an incident where someone’s dog mauled two colleagues of ours, one needed surgery. The owner did not so much as help with the medical bills. I can just imagine what would happen in the U.S. if someone’s dog did so much damage to an innocent visitor.

What about politicians? Don’t we sometimes trust too much in politicians? Seriously, I may be a bit out of touch but I keep up a bit with the speeches and opinions. The people that become leaders in the U.S. have become experts at saying what people want to hear. For some reason tooting their own horn in ways that would be unacceptable in normal society has become a requirement! Why is that? What would you think of someone who said something like “I’m better than he/she is.” … “I’m smarter than they are.” … “I know better than anyone else.” Who does that? Only a miracle will leave us with a good leader because our system does its best to weed out anyone who would simply tell the truth. One or two issues like immigration or the economy become the entire criteria. How can we put so much trust in politicians?

The Lord our God is the only thing in our life that is completely trustworthy. Even people we think are our friends can disappear or even become an enemy. Usually based on just one point of contention with little regard for the rest of the package.

So CNN reported that tragically South Africa is dealing with power outages of up to 2 hours a day! It is crippling the economy by bankrupting small businesses and setting the country back decades. Sorry, it made me chuckle. We are at up to 8 hours a day with no idea if it will get worse or better. It is generally believed that the reason for this is not a shortage of electricity since we have plenty of hydro resources. No, it is generally believed (and partially proven) that the folks in charge sell it to another country for less per unit than to their own citizens. Why would they do that? Well because the monetary income from the other country creates something that looks like a GNP, not only that but that money has very little regulation so they can use it however they’d like. Even if it means to buy themselves another big house. Not a lot of trusting politicians going on here.

Here we can’t trust the police, we can’t trust the government, we can’t even trust the vendor that just sold us something. “No returns” is the norm here with very few exceptions. In fact in this society there is even very little outrage over some random group blocking the road and charging “taxes” to use it.

Strangely that seems to be the result of not being able to trust each other. There aren’t too many nationals here that trust their government, but they don’t trust each other, and many see no reason to be trustworthy. It’s pretty sad.

Don’t get me wrong, the west has a good thing … I just hope you will recognize that God is the only thing we can completely and fully trust. The belief that everyone around us owes us something really makes life miserable. A place like this can really enhance our sense of humor and in the end, even with the lights out for 8 hours a day, we enjoy life just as much … If not more.