When our son Andrew was young, he was strong-willed and cautious. He was hesitant about trying new things. My wife Chris and I had to coax him into taking swimming lessons, going to summer camp, and trying new activities. It often became a battle of wills. I would become so exasperated with his reluctance and stubbornness that I would tell him finally, “Trust me. We want you to try this. If you don’t like it after giving it your all, you can quit. I can’t explain it to you right now in the way that makes sense to you, so you’ll have to trust us in this.” You know something? He almost always liked it. He almost never quit. That’s why his adventuresome spirit today intrigues us as parents. There are times when God tells us, in so many words, “Trust me. I can’t explain it to you right now, but I have your best interests in mind. Trust me in this.” Can I learn to trust God when the circumstances of my life don’t make sense?
Louisa M. R. Stead (1850-1917) went to Long Island Beach with her husband and four-year-old daughter Lily on a picnic in 1880. They heard the frantic cries of a boy caught in ocean currents and struggling to keep his head above water. In his effort to save the drowning boy, Louisa’s husband died in the failed rescue. Witnessing this trauma was an unimaginable horror for Louisa and her daughter. Yet, two years later, Louisa wrote the lyrics to “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” likely the only hymn she ever composed. I was unfamiliar with this forgotten song until Country Singer Alan Jackson recorded it in recent years. I count twenty-five references to Jesus in this four-stanza hymn. The last stanza is clearly autobiographical as she prayed: “I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee, Precious Jesus, Savior, friend, And I know that Thou art with me, Wilt be with me to the end.”
Louisa and Lily moved to South Africa after her husband’s death, where she served as a missionary for fifteen years. She returned to the States with her second husband, Robert, to regain her health and spent her remaining years in mission service in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Her hymn leads us in prayer to trust Jesus when the circumstances of our lives don’t make sense: