It’s later in the morning than I usually awaken. +OneFriend has a cold and is struggling with quite a cough in the night, so LightHusband and I were up with him a good bit last night. It is one of the miracles of this place that I am able to sleep in a bit when necessary.

We probably should not have gone out for creemees (as softserve icecream is called up in these parts) last night. The ride home required that we have the windows open to air out the fumes from the gas can we had filled for the boat rides taken during the day (tubing in the afternoon and fishing after dinner). The cool pollen filled air started +OneFriend’s coughing jag and he just couldn’t get past it.

So it’s been later than usual for me to come out to the porch and sit with my coffee and cruller. The clouds are puffy as a fresh snowbank over the ridge across the bay and the boats are lolling in no particular direction, at ease awaiting their next orders from the currents and winds. Children and parents are playing at various camps around the cove, and LightBoy is fishing.

I’ve been musing about the various pillars which support human relationships this morning. Mostly I’ve been thinking about trust. I’ve been remembering how +OneFriend came in the dark of night, trusting that when I told him to awaken me if he needed to, I would respond. Of course I did. LightHusband and I sat with him for the hour it took to quieten his cough and relax and go back to sleep. For the most part, children trust very easily. They believe the things that they are told by adults. Their minds do not have the ability to question or challenge. They do not bother with the things that are beneath the surface. There are no icebergs. It is only when we become adults that we begin searching for hidden meanings, the lines between the lines, the hurts and betrayals.

There are two things that Jesus said that I’ve been musing about this morning. The first is that we (all of us … especially the adults) should come to Him with faith like children. The second is that we should be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. Now before you begin taking me to task for taking those verses out of context, I know I did that! Those are some fairly standard teachings of Jesus and I’m musing on my porch about trust and I don’t have my Bible/concordance/commentary open next to me. I merely think that in regards to trust issues, those two teachings put us in a place of tension. It is difficult to hold faith with child-like trust, yet be wise as a serpent. I think it requires that we overlook an awful lot of hurts done to us. Perhaps it even puts us in the place where we forgive others seventy times seven. I think it requires that we sometimes conciously not look for lines between lines or hidden meanings. I wonder, if, perhaps, that tension isn’t a most difficult aspect of my faith.