CERTAINTY IN UNCERTAINTY

Spring 2013 has sprung!  But this cherry blossom tree
didn't start blooming till late March.

“If only I can believe. If only I can have faith.” A cousin who did not share my faith told me once. An intelligent man, well-educated and quite accomplished in his field, held in high respect in his profession, he had a difficult time accepting anything by faith. He has to prove things, to have empirical evidence in order to believe. A Doubting Thomas who questioned Jesus' resurrection after death, who had to see and touch Jesus' tangible and physical wounded body in order to believe.  

 

I then asked, “Did you take the plane to come here?” His answer was “Yes.” I further asked, “Did you know the pilot?” His answer was ”No.” “Well, then,” I said, “Bet you didn’t even check his license. Wasn’t it your faith in the pilot and in the mechanical integrity of the plane that brought you here?"  

Do these ducks and geese know for certain they will
 have food from day to day?

As I have grown in years, there have been many more things that I am learning not to take for granted. When one is young, one takes more things for granted. As a young person, I would plan for the next day, week, month or year as if I had control in the number of hours, days, months and years that I would have. But now that I have lived longer, and seen more things, I have become more aware of things I do not control. And really, to live a life with meaning is to live a life of faith. If we didn’t have faith that when we cross the street on a green light , the motorists will stop for us, we would never be able to cross any street. If I had no faith that the people in the restaurants who prepare my food and the waiters that served me would do their job honestly and could be trusted, I would never dine out. If I didn’t trust that the bus drivers or the train engineers knew how to drive the buses and operate the train, I would just have to walk everywhere or drive my car. But then that will require me having faith in the motorists stopping on red lights and the other motorists to obey the traffic rules or they might hit my car. And on, and on, it goes, things that we do on faith, actually.  Then there are things that happen beyond our control or expectations.  The Berlin Wall. Did we expect it to fall?  Or who would have known that the World Trade Center, hub of world commerce and trade would be completely deleted from the famous New York City skyline?

 

Sometimes we try to control our circumstances only to have some monkey wrench thrown in by someone. Sometimes we get completely blindsided.  We do need to plan and try to do our best to get prepared for whatever might come our way, but there really is so much uncertainty to life and for this we need faith.  Many years ago, I put my faith in One who is Certain and Unchanging and found out that through my uncertainties, He was the only certainty I had and that was so comforting. Oswald Chambers in his My Utmost for His Highest says,

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life—gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.