Trusting in man

The wife of a politician aspiring for high office with apparent success on a platform of "hope" and "change" recently said that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud of her country, not just because her husband is doing well, but because people are hungry for change.

The first words of today’s first reading (Jeremiah 17:5-10) need to be heard by everyone as a brutally clear Reality Check:

Thus says the LORD:
"Cursed is the man who trusts in man..."

It does not matter how intelligent, prudent, experienced, fresh, likeable, well-meaning, or eloquent a human being may be. Human beings are fallible and finite.

Only God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving.

Only God is truly and safely worthy of our trust.

To be sure, we need to work with other people, making the best prudential (and prayerful) judgments that we can – for although all human beings are imperfect, some are more dangerously imperfect than others – yet we must be very clear in our own minds and in our own lives that only the Lord is worthy of all our trust.

Thus says the LORD:
Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his arm,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.

He shall dwell
in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.

He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately corrupt;
who can understand it?

I the LORD search the mind
and try the heart,
to give to every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his doings.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, be merciful to me – a sinner.