What I Know

I was sitting in my reading chair last night picking Luke's brain for the umpteenth time on how we could spend the evening, and we settled on ordering the game "Battleship" from Amazon, when Luke said to me, "We can order it, but it probably will get here when this quarantine is over." 

Just hours before that, I was talking to a co-worker about the possibility of school not starting back up in August again like normal, and hours before that conversation, I had read an articled titled, "No Concerts Until 2021." 

Each of these scenarios playing out in my head with a big shrug and a deep sigh of "I don't know." 

And I think, this may be the answer you've been looking for. 

There is absolutely no way for us to know how this is going to end. 

It's fascinating to me that someone out there has made a prediction that is probably correct, but I can tell you that person is not me, and I'd be willing to put money down that it isn't your next door neighbor who has been prophesying his prediction on Facebook for the third time this week. 
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What will happen in the foreseeable future? Will the economy come roaring back to life in the next two months? Or, will this continue on for the remainder of 2020? We don't know. 

In general? Will the outside of my house be done by the end of August? In the past it's been, "Will I be able to graduate in three years? When will Luke propose? When will I be able to buy my first house? Where will my first job be?  I didn't know the answers then either. 

And serendipitously enough, those things all worked out for me in the end. 

The ability to throw your hands up in the air and say "I don't know," while scary at first, is really a very freeing solution. 

Besides, I've never read a good story where the ending was spoiled right at the beginning. 

When it comes down to it, whether I'm trying to predict the end of a pandemic or the weather, all I'm really trying to do is create a false sense of reality where I am  calling the shots by shouting them into the universe.

All we want is control, whether it's real or not, and by trying to predict the future, all we are really trying to do is guess the outcome so we feel like we have something to plan for.

If there's two things that uncertainty proves, it proves that we need something bigger than ourselves, and we need faith. How do you think Jonah felt sitting in his uncertainty in the stomach of a whale? Or Noah, when he and his family had been on an arc in the middle of nowhere for 40 days? Or Moses when a literal sea was split wide open and he was expected to lead thousands through it?  Or Mary and the disciples as they waited for Day 3?

Need I go on? 

Uncertainty and doubt, are really just an auditorium for faith to take centerstage. 

Jonah cries out to God, and is delivered. Noah rides out the storm. Moses ends up doing that and so much more. And Mary and the disciples, well, you know how that one ends. 

"Faith shows the reality of what we hope for and is the evidence of things we cannot see. " Hebrews 11:1 

Is your faith in the doctors and nurses who are tirelessly working to bring us a cure? Is it in government officials who are making recommendations every day? Is it in yourself and trying to do everything you possibly can to control the outcome of your current situation? 

Or is it in the One who promises time and time and time again that He will work everything together for good wether you know the ending or not. 

At the end of the day, all doctors, government officials, moms & dads, all they are is human. That's it. So while we can believe in them and support them, they will never give us the peace we all are looking for right now. The peace that comes to rule you heart. 

So here's what I do know, in the end I don't know and you don't know, and that's okay. 

There's a quote from a book where a woman falls deathly ill, and as she's about to to take her last breath a vision of Jesus appears to her, heals her, and says the following...

All will be well. 
All will be well. 
And all manners of things will be well. 

​Amen.