https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nHxKTMg0CE
Solomon, one of the wisest men of his time, said you should only trust one individual with your entire heart (see Proverbs 3:5). Ronald Reagan, a politician, famously had this to say: “Trust but verify.” A good friend of mine more recently said that to live successfully, you must have some level of trust in people. I get that, and I’m in total agreement. I’ve always known that, but figuring out just when to trust some individuals never seemed urgent until recently. If you haven’t realized yet, today I’d like to tell you a brief story about trust. Let me share with you a recent experience that happened in the office. One of my colleagues, a generous lady who means well, knows that I don’t eat meat. But anytime she’s eating she has to share with everyone. She never likes to be the only one in the room eating. How many of you know someone who’s like that? We all do. The majority of the time she eats stuff I stay away from. On this particular day, though, she said, “Uan, you have to try this pretzel, hmm, delicious. I insist. Everyone else is trying it. Now it’s your turn.”I took two pretzels just to prevent her from saying, “Haha I knew you would only take one.” I usually read the ingredients before eating things if I haven’t met the baker, but I trusted that my colleague wouldn’t try to deceive me. But boy was I wrong! As I lifted the pretzel toward my mouth, I smelled something unusual, and I said “Hold on. Is there meat in this thing?” “Only a little for coloring,” she responded.“ I haven’t sold platinum yet, are you trying to kill me?” I asked. “Oh, Uan get over it.” I immediately began wiping my mouth with a hand towel before rushing to the restroom. Yes, you need to have some level of trust in people around you, but as you see from my experience with my colleague, you can’t trust everyone. That’s especially true with food when you’re a vegetarian. I’ve found that when someone doesn’t eat meat, a lot of people become concerned because they think the vegetarian isn’t getting enough protein. Can you blame them for that? No, because they mean you well. But that can mean they’ll try to sneak some dead animal into your diet to boost your protein intake. After all, I have to say that Solomon, Reagan, and my friend were correct. You don’t need to check the food offered by the one person you trust with all your heart, but with other people – especially meat eaters – you need to trust but verify when it comes to meals. If you’re a vegetarian, you might not be able to trust everyone to serve you a meal, but if they announce that there’s a fire in the building, you still better run.
