My husband was unemployed, so I needed a job. I was writing a monthly column for a national Canadian church paper, but we couldn’t live on that. I was invited to an interview by an American firm that had just bought out the oldest publisher in Canada, and they needed a good Canadian to trot out when they were criticized. Being a recent American immigrant, I didn’t know any of this.

The CEO and Vice President sat me down at a small table in their study. It held an immense coffee pot with bone china cups, cloth napkins, and an ornate sugar bowl and creamer set. Our knees were drawn up, crowded around the small table. I was impressed by their expensive suits. The job that they had in mind for me, the CEO said, was to meet their authors at the airport and take them out for a meal, extolling the publisher.

Oh dear! I hadn’t driven in Canada; I had no car or license. Although I began to worry, I remembered that someone said, Faith is a lighted doorway; trust is a darkened hallway. This means that trust is an action word, for which faith is just the beginning. God was in this. I needed to trust Him.

The CEO handed me a cup of coffee. Determinedly laying aside my “what if’s”, I grabbed for the cup — and missed. It fell to the floor and broke, splashing me with hot coffee. Leaping up in shock and pain, I overturned the table, which tipped the large coffee pot onto the laps of my interviewers. The two men staggered to their feet, suppressing screams, and we did a little jig until most of the pain had subsided. When the table was upright again and the now-empty sugar bowl and creamer were its only decoration, I could see the two men envisioning me similarly assaulting their authors, bringing howls of agony and possible lawsuits.

Suddenly, the Vice President remembered another job opening: a children’s book program done entirely by mail. “Just the thing for you,” he said.

I worked for them until my husband found a job visiting inmates in federal prison. One of them had written a memoir that my new firm wanted to publish, but the author was currently “in the hole”. My husband took the manuscript to him, and it subsequently won the Governor General’s Award For Literature. Trust had put me in a place to have played a small part in that success.

“We have [fixed our] hope on the living God, Who is the Savior (Preserver, Maintainer, Deliverer) of all men, especially of those who believe (trust in, rely on, and adhere to Him).” (1 Timothy 4:10b AMPC)

God did have a job for me, just as He does have a way forward for you. Someone said that worry is just low-grade atheism. There’s a world of distinction in saying that we have faith in God and actually trusting God. Trust is our pathway through the darkness.

Prayer: O Saviour, Maintainer, Preserver, and Deliverer, we rest our weary souls on You, trusting in Your promises and sharing our experience of Your loving kindness, despite our human frailties. How grateful we are to be Your children, especially in times like these. Thank You for saving, maintaining, preserving, and delivering us. Increase our trust in You today. Amen.


Copyright © 2022, by Rose DeShaw <rise370@gmail.com>, first published on the PresbyCan Daily Devotional presbycan.ca .
Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Reprinted from PresbyCan with author’s permission