How do we trust?  No doubt you have heard people of religious faith advising others when they are faced with situations of tragedy or grief to simply, "Trust God."  Easy to say, of course, so very hard to do.  How do we trust a being whom we cannot hear or see?  How do we trust a presence solely on the basis of the words he has supposedly delivered to us?
     These questions have no easy answers.  Some might say that trust is painless, that is, just let go and "let God."  How hard is that?  Well, on the one hand, it is not.  We let go of what we know to trust in someone whom we believe does.  On the other hand, that's the problem:  on what basis do we trust this someone?
     We begin, some might say, by acknowledging the worth of the communications this someone has shared with us.  We trust his word.  Others will say that although acknowledging the value of the words is vitally important, it is also critical that we learn to trust our experience.  We think about how this someone may have responded to us in times past.
     However, if we do not have a history of trusting, experience means little.  And if we do not see a reason to affirm the worth of this someone's words, we essentially have no basis from which to proceed.
     That's why the writer of the fifth verse of the third chapter of Proverbs remarks, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."  In the end, to trust God, we must commit our heart, the center of emotion and imagination, as well as our mind, the core of our mental functions, to the task.  We must commit all of what we are.  If we omit the heart, we merely spin the wheels of our intellect.  If we omit the mind, we are shouting out without a clue.  Trusting God demands all of our being.  That's why it's so challenging--and difficult.
     For better or worse, however, if we wish to know life as it really is, we must break out of the little worlds we have constructed, in ourselves, to explain, in ourselves, that which we, in our finite selves, cannot possibly understand.  Otherwise, we'll never see what's on the other side.  And in an infinite universe, there's always another side to find.