I have just arrived from a 600Km day long trip from Nairobi to Mombasa. As I was frantically trying to flag down a three wheeled tuk tuk taxi on alighting from the bus, I saw the burly bus driver jump from his high seat and onto the ground and then proceed to the bus company’s offices. And as he disappeared through the open door, I thought that I should have caught his attention and complimented him on how well he had driven the bus. However the noisy engine of an approaching tuk tuk brought my attention back to the mission at hand and was soon at the mercy of an unshaved angry looking taxi driver as he dodged through the evening rush hour traffic even before my bag was fully stowed into the tiny taxi’s passenger compartment.

And throughout the twenty minutes ride to my house, I was thinking about the inevitability of trusting other people. And I was still preoccupied with the thoughts when I came to the end of the tuk tuk journey, and once again I was walking away from another stranger that I had trusted with my safety on the road.

Regardless of whether you take public transport or drive your own car, your safety lies in how thoroughly the mechanic who fixed the wheels, or the brakes or the electrical system of whichever vehicle you travel in. And this blind trust travels backwards since the mechanic would have trusted the manufacturer of the spare parts, who in turn would have trusted his factory equipment manufacturer and so on and so forth. I suppose that at the very basic level of trust, we have to trust the creator of the elements that are used in the manufacturing. We have to trust the creator of the food that we eat. We have to trust the creator of the air that we breathe. We have to trust the creator of our lives.

Once in a while a person recognizes the need to compliment or thank the Creator for all the good care that He takes for us, but something that had preoccupied our attention demands to be focused on once again. And so like the burly bus driver whose eight hours of rapt attention to driving go unsung, God has to go another day without praise. But does He mind? No! For tonight, He will watch over all of us as we sleep, just like the bus driver will take another bus load of passengers back to Nairobi regardless of praise or not. But just how pleasantly surprised would the bus driver have been had I complimented his driving? How pleasantly surprised is God when we stop to thank and praise Him?