Imagine if you were one of the four NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) currently orbiting around the Earth with two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut. Yesterday, after increasing sanctions were placed on Russia for their invasion of Ukraine, some of those sanctions specifically directed at their space industry, the chief of Russia’s space agency issued a veiled threat of deorbiting the ISS and having it crash in the USA or Europe.

Suddenly the astronauts and cosmonauts who had been working together on the ISS and getting along in cramped quarters for months, are now pawns in an earthly conflict, vulnerable in ways they never imagined.

Vulnerability has a context. There are different levels of vulnerability with different consequences. Some vulnerabilities cost us little. Other vulnerabilities might cost us our lives. The most daunting of vulnerabilities is experienced when we have absolutely no control over the outcome of a perilous situation. Yes, we should pray, but once our prayers have been offered and our posture of faith has been assumed, we are left with a single choice – to trust God.

You may not be circling Earth in the ISS realizing the world is on the edge of a global conflict and you are now part of a political chess game, but you may be orbiting around an impossible situation where all solutions to resolve your personal conflict are out of reach.

There is a freedom that comes in those extremely vulnerable situations for those whose trust has been placed in the Lord as their only source of redemption. It is akin to someone on the edge of death when all ties to earthly solutions have finally slipped away and they are left alone in the hands of God. That kind of trust brings a sense of peace beyond our comprehension – a peace that overcomes any sense of vulnerability and resulting loss no matter what orbit our lives are experiencing.