In Trust, God Becomes Everything

Companion Reflection to "Not Knowing Up From Down"

“I trusted, even when I said I am greatly afflicted.”

There are moments in the spiritual life when the soul feels as though it is held together only by a single thread. Nothing feels stable. Nothing feels earned. Nothing feels clear. And yet in the midst of that frailty, a strange word rises from the depths of the psalmist’s heart in Psalm 116: “I love the Lord for he has heard the cry of my appeal.” It is not triumph speaking. It is not strength. It is the confession of one who has been brought low and discovered that God bends down to hear the voice of the small.

The Grail translation captures this beautifully.

“They surrounded me, the snares of death, with the anguish of the grave; they caught me, sorrow and distress.”

This is the realism of the Psalms and the realism of the desert. The Fathers never pretended that prayer shields a man from sorrow. They taught the opposite. They taught that prayer strips away illusions until one meets sorrow unmediated and without distraction. Abba Moses said that the cell teaches everything because it forces a man to face the truth about his own heart. And one of the first truths discovered there is this: we are fragile.

Yet the psalmist makes a vow of trust in the very place where most would despair.

“In my grief I called to the Lord. O Lord, my God, deliver me.”

He does not defend himself. He does not analyze the affliction. He does not seek escape. He simply cries out. This is the cry of the poor man of Psalm 34 whom the Lord hears. It is the cry that becomes the foundation of all hesychastic prayer, the deep groaning beneath the words of the Jesus Prayer.

The strange thing is that the cry is enough.

For the psalm goes on:

“The Lord is gracious and just. Our God has compassion.”

This is not a doctrine. It is a discovery born from anguish. The psalmist does not say that the Lord has removed the snares or undone the distress. He says that the Lord has compassion — which in the spiritual life often means that He makes Himself present in the affliction rather than eliminating it.

Modern elders speak the same way.

St Sophrony says that when a person stands before God with the mind in the heart, even when the heart is broken or clouded, grace begins to kindle “in the region of the deep.” Elder Aimilianos taught that there comes a moment when one realizes that suffering itself becomes prayer because it lifts the eyes of the heart to God without pretense.

Psalm 116 leads us into that mystery.

“Turn back, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has been good.”

Rest does not come after the affliction. Rest comes in the midst of it when the soul remembers who the Lord is. The remembrance itself becomes rest. It becomes a cradle for the weary mind, a lamp for the road that is only dimly seen.

And then the psalm opens into something even deeper.

“He has kept my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling.”

This is not a claim that one will never fall or weep. It is the realization that even in the darkest season something prevented total collapse. Something — or rather Someone — held the soul when the soul could not hold itself. The Fathers would call this the secret work of grace, the hidden help, the invisible companion in the desert of confusion.

This is why the psalmist says,

“I trusted, even when I said, I am greatly afflicted.”

Trust is not the denial of affliction. It is the decision to lean the full weight of the heart upon God while still trembling. It is the courage to say, “My suffering is real, but God is more real still.”

Finally the psalm turns outward:

“I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.”

For the one who clings to God in confusion is given a wider horizon. The affliction does not disappear, but it becomes transparent. One begins to see through it to the One who walks with them.

This is the heart of Psalm 116.

It is the mystery of a soul who has not been delivered from the storm but is being held within it.

It is the testimony of one who has been taught the lesson the desert fathers knew well — that a man learns God most deeply when he no longer trusts his own strength or clarity.

Not knowing up from down, the soul rises with this confession faint but firm.

“I trusted, even when I said, I am greatly afflicted.”

And in that trust, God becomes everything.