Corrie ten Boom knew trust. Real trust. The kind that holds firm when everything is falling apart. She and her family risked everything to hide Jewish refugees from the Nazis, believing faith wasn’t just an idea but something lived. For that, she was thrown into a concentration camp. Surrounded by suffering, she held onto one thing.
“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”1
These are simple words, but real trust is hard when life is spinning out of control. Most people want certainty, a clear answer, someone to blame, anything to make sense of the chaos. Faith is often the last thing reached for in those moments.
Take the recent plane crashes. Some immediately blamed Trump, claiming his policies wrecked aviation safety. Others pointed at diversity initiatives, arguing hiring standards had been compromised. It was the same event, but two completely different villains. It wasn’t about truth. It was about finding a narrative that fit.
But reality is messier. Air travel safety isn’t controlled by one person, one policy, or one administration. It’s decades of engineering, regulations, and human decision-making. But complexity doesn’t fit neatly into a headline, so people shrink it down to something small enough to get angry about.
This happens all the time in politics, economics, cultural shifts, and personal struggles. When things go wrong, instead of sitting with the discomfort of uncertainty, people grab the first explanation that makes them feel in control. At some point, everyone has to ask what that says about what they actually believe.
Jesus told his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1 ESV). He wasn’t telling them to ignore fear but where to put it. Not in politicians. Not in conspiracy theories. Not in whatever trending outrage feels good in the moment. But in him.
It’s easy to trust Jesus when life is steady. It’s another thing when everything feels shaky, the news is terrible, the future looks uncertain, and the easy explanations don’t hold up. That’s when real beliefs get exposed. Is trust in God real, or is he just a passing thought before looking for security elsewhere?
Faith doesn’t ignore reality or pretend everything is fine. It refuses to let fear dictate the response. It doesn’t chase the wrong story, the wrong enemy, or the wrong hope. If Jesus is who he says he is, faith should look different from the rest of the world. Steady, not reactionary. Clear, not frantic. Rooted in truth, not just what feels true in the moment.
This is real trust. We are not chasing fear-driven narratives, rushing to assign blame just to make sense of things, or putting faith in the wrong places. Instead, we are walking in step with the one who actually holds the world together.
~PW 🌮🛶
- Ten Boom, C. (1971). The Hiding Place. Chosen Books. Cornelia “Corrie” ten Boom (15 April 1892 – 15 April 1983) was a Dutch Christian who, along with her father and other family members, helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. She was imprisoned for her actions. Her most famous book, The Hiding Place, describes the ordeal. ↩︎
Phillip W. Martin 
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