Unpredictability of Life

Most of us have a good idea of what life will look like in a month or year ahead, but honestly none of us can be entirely 100% sure. Life changes unexpectedly at times. Jobs responsibilities may change, people sometimes need to move away, and hurricanes or tornadoes are a little closer than we'd like at times.

Honesty about the reality of life in this fact is not bad. We shouldn't always focus on the fact, but if we acknowledge it's true, it allows us to admit the great importance of the fact that God knows and directs life. We can still have hope and joy because our God is good and knows everything. We have great reason to worship him.

God is also always the same. He won't change, and he is good, so this is good news. There is at least one thing in life that we know is certain.

If we're Christians we know that he is with us now, and in the life to come we will be with him still, in an even greater sense. It's a beautiful future.

We can't predict the future but the future may bring blessings that we never would have imagined. New opportunities to minister or work. New friends.

Understanding of Events in Life

Often we do not understand life. Events do not make sense. Does God really have a will in the world?

One thing is that the will of God is often used in the singular as if God has one will. People act as if God could not have multiple wills in the same event for different people.

Often God's will is mysterious. He does things and you will not know why. Sometimes you may get a clue many years later, but often not.

You see that is what faith is. We are not shown everything. Living by faith always requires trust. That is why love will continue in the last day and faith will not.

We will never know everything in this life and an obsession with knowing everything is unhealthy. We have to trust God even when Life does not make sense.

It can seem unfair to trust God when it does not make sense, but God offered us forgiveness when it did not make sense.

God loves us and treats us with love but we often do not see it. You see we look at a tiny part of the picture. We are too close to see what is going on most of the time.

It is helpful as the saying goes to look at the forest rather than the trees at times. In the moment of life we are amidst the trees.

Sometimes years later we have distance to see the forest and not the trees but often the distance is only in the life to come. We live day by day by faith. We never get past faith.

Faith

Kierkegaard wrote,

"Faith requires that a man be out over the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms. The attempt to take away this uncertainty is an attempt to do away with faith."

I find this very insightful. Faith without uncertainty is not faith but knowledge. In this life we must stride forth based on our faith in Jesus and his promises toward us. We do not have the luxury of only doing things for Jesus that we know will turn out well. At certain points in my life I have been tempted to not do difficult things (like give generously) because these things leave me with uncertainty about the future. The reality of life is that a faithful life to Jesus always leads us into uncertainty, because that is the nature of faith. If our faith in Jesus does not lead us into uncertainty is probably a sign that we are living more by human wisdom than divine wisdom. When our faith as Christians leads us into uncertain waters is a sign that we are following Jesus.