The Beauty of Uncertainty

As spring blooms in the meadows and woods and hillsides of my beloved East Tennessee, I find myself awakening to a fresh, new season in my own winter-wearied soul. It is a season of growth, much like the tender green shoots pushing through the dark, rich soil in my Kirkhaven garden. New life. New hope. New dreams.


And like all growth that brings fresh strength, beauty, and insight, this growth comes from a place of deep fellowship with the Lord. Not a place of fanfare and bravado. Not a place of human consolation. Not a place where the definition of who I am and what I do has any dependence upon the opinions or the needs or the denigrations . . . especially the manipulations and control . . . of other people. This has been a place of drawing aside to be with the Lord and to glory in His fellowship alone.

It is impossible to live in community with others if you have not learned to live alone with the Lord. All life flows from Him. All truth abides in Him.

To believe that you can plumb the depths and comprehend the breadth and live in full, vital relationship with the Lord of the Universe in a few minutes . . . or a few days . . . or even a few years of distracted study and abbreviated prayer is a most grievous mistake. It is sometimes necessary to have protracted times of aloneness . . . long walks in the Lord’s companionship through the meadows and the deserts and the mountains and the valleys of life’s journey . . . until the essence of God Himself can begin to impact your frail character and mold your stubborn will.

And to believe that you can rightly relate, with true Christian graces, to both the unsaved world and God’s community of believers without a rich, deep, enduring, secret life alone with the Lord is worse than grievous . . . it is devastating. Vain philosophies, misguided doctrines, and co-dependant relationships are the fruits of deep, personal, intimate relationships that are shallow in the Lord.

God is more. He is always more than I can possibly take in. And more than I could ever relate or share. So I find myself, at this juncture of my life, beginning to relish things that, in earlier times, caused me youthful consternation. I am finding . . . in the more-ness of God . . . that I have settled for far too little . . . for far too long.

One of the biggest things that I am beginning to cherish . . . that I once deemed a frustration and a stress . . . is uncertainty. Oswald Chambers, in his book My Utmost for His Highest, eloquently expresses how uncertainty is a blessing in the life of a dependant child of God:

Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.

Then he goes further to press the importance of this uncertainty in the formation of a humble, teachable, growing heart:

When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him. Jesus said, “Except ye . . . become as little children.” Spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the ban of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.

To live in gracious uncertainty means that we don’t have to understand it all. We don’t have to explain it all. We don’t have to be it all. There is a simplicity and humility and sincerity in this kind of spiritual posture. There is an enormous ability to appreciate different people with different perspectives. There is a freedom to accept our own frailty and to depend upon God’s faithful strength. Gracious uncertainty allows us to release others to pursue genuine godliness. And it allows us to release ourselves from the yardsticks that measure our worth and our status.

Try to define love?
Try to understand grace?
Try to explain righteousness?
Try to build a profound teaching
or acquire a special revelation
or develop a faultless doctrine
that is immutable and global and imperative?

Nope.

None of those occupations can change a human heart.
They can’t turn water to wine
or stone to flesh
or mourning to dancing
or fear to hope.

Only God can do that.
And His Ways can be the most surprising, amazing, unexpected things.

I am thinking that a life of gracious uncertainty is a lovely life.
Who knows where it will take me??
I am thinking that is the whole point.

:)

Time to Dig

Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.
Genesis 26:18


I have been thinking about wells lately. We are finishing a well-drilling project here at Kirkhaven, and my heart has been captured by both the practical blessings and the spiritual symbolism of wells. We have “city water” here on our farm, so a well certainly wasn’t a Kirkhaven necessity. But as our farming ventures have begun to grow, my husband and I began to see the value of having our own underground water source . . . especially since we will soon have an acre pond that needs filling.

Deciding where to drill the well turned out to be simple . . . in a surreal kind of way. No one could give us any scientific formula for choosing the right drilling spot. My husband and I had discussed possible locations, but we both felt completely inadequate to make such a sweeping decision. We had already prayed for favor and blessing on the project. So we did what we have always done in projects that seemed to test the limits of our abilities and our faith. We just trusted God. We shrugged our shoulders. We made a decision. “Put the well wherever my wife wants it,” my husband joked, grinning. “I don’t want it to be my fault if this well ends up dry.” So John, the drill-rig assistant, ceremoniously handed me his empty Mountain Dew bottle and said, “Drop this where you want your well. That’s where we’ll drill.”

I dropped the bottle, with as much flare as I could muster, right at my feet. The rig commenced drilling. Only God knew what we would find.

I watched as the McCall Well Drilling and Pump Service turned up topsoil, then red clay, then Tennessee limestone. “You’ll hit water eventually,” Mr. McCall had said, “just no tellin’ how deep you’ll have to go or what kind of flow you’ll find when you get there.” Since the depth of the well determined its cost, we hoped that we wouldn’t have to drill any deeper than 300 feet.

From my research, I learned that our official state rock -  limestone - was often a great source of groundwater, so I bent down and scooped up a handful of the drilling debris at the edge of the deepening shaft. It looked like finely crushed gravel. But it was dry. Bone dry. I stood there beside the loud droning of the powerful drill . . . holding my dry, dusty limestone pieces . . . and I prayed for water.

That was a powerfully symbolic moment for me. Praying for water . . . cool, pure, life-giving water . . . drawn from a well dug by our own efforts . . . standing in utter faith that God would bless this work . . . knowing that when we found water . . . if we found water . . . the enduring testimony we would pass on to our children and our grand-children would be simply this:

El Shaddai is faithful.

When I look at my country today . . . and especially at the American church . . . I see dry, dusty limestone. Rock that is associated with water. Rock that often has fossils of marine animals embedded in it. Rock that signifies great potential for well drilling. But it is dry. Bone dry.

I remember how, in my twenties, we would sing in church about the “rain of God” as we enthusiastically prayed and believed and expected great outpourings of revival in our land. Sometimes we saw miracles. Sometimes we saw hearts gloriously converted to faith in Jesus Christ. But it was always about “the rain.” God would “come down” and we would glory in it all.

I believe the time for dancing in the rain has passed. There will, as sure as God is faithful, be outpourings of God’s love and mercy on this land and on His people. But our hands have grown soft . . . our wills have become lazy . . . our theology has shriveled into dry, psychological, socialistic graceology. “God does it all. Salvation is free. No worries . . . no fretting . . . no working . . . we’re all okay. Get a revelation of the grace message and you’ll never thirst again.”  Like in the days of Isaac in Genesis, the Philistines have stopped up the ancient wells. Who is left to dig them again?

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:1-5

What has happened to this kind of virtue? Where are our heroes of perseverance and proven character? Is there anyone left who believes that repentance is necessary, virtue is mandated, and good works are necessary in the Kingdom of God?

Our well-drilling at Kirkhaven turned into an expensive project. We had to drill much deeper than our hoped-for 300 feet. At one point we dug through two caves and had to pull up the drill bits, undo what had already been done, and double the amount of wall casing that was installed. We drilled all week and only found a minimum of water . . . 5 gallons –per-minute flow rate. By Monday morning, our 6th day of drilling, we were faced with a simple question: how deep is deep enough?

We passed 600 feet . . . then 700 feet . . . and the drill foreman asked us the same question each time we passed another 100 feet: “Are you ready to quit or do you want to go deeper?”

“If we go deeper, will that increase our flow rate?” I asked Chris. “Maybe not. Probably not. There’s really no way of knowing,” he answered as he shrugged his shoulders.

At the 700 foot mark, we finally gave Chris a definitive answer to his “how deep” question: “Go 800 feet.” That was it. 800 feet and no more. We would be grateful for whatever flow rate we found at that depth. Then we prayed one final, simple prayer:

“Father, bless this well. Send us a gusher. Oh Lord, let there be a gusher at Kirkhaven!”

As the sun was sinking low on Kirkhaven’s western horizon Monday afternoon, I saw the McCall Well Drilling truck amble up our gravel drive toward the exit to our property. I assumed the guys were headed home for the day and I waved to them, smiling. My husband and I were at the barn finishing our chicken coop. But instead of continuing up the drive, they turned onto the access driveway and pulled up to the barn . . . arms raised in victory: “It’s a gusher!”

Our well is sunk into an underground river at 760 feet. The current of the water is so powerful it prevented the drill from progressing any deeper. The water was gushing out of our shaft so fast that an accurate flow rate couldn’t be determined. Chris estimated it at “40 or 60 or probably greater than 60 gallons per minute.” After the bit was removed and the well was capped, the water level rose 555 feet up the shaft . . . now resting at an easily accessible 205 feet.

Digging this well was time-consuming. It was a test of our hope and faith. It was expensive. But it is an underground gusher . . . rain or shine . . . flood or drought . . . for generations to come. A testimony of God’s all-sufficient faithfulness.

Here is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship says about the treasure of God’s grace in His church. In the 1940’s, Bonhoeffer actively and openly opposed both Hitler's National Socialism and the infiltration of Nazi philosophy and control into Germany’s churches. Bonhoffer was arrested for helping Jews escape to Switzerland, and was then executed by hanging at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. He is a hero of the Christian faith and I believe that his words have great counsel for Christians today:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.... Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian 'conception' of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins.... In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God . . .


Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

America . . .
Church . . .
We need a gusher . . . a pure, clean, river of living water flowing up from deep within the very heart of God.

It is time for virtue and hope.
It is time for the kind of faith that produces the character of God in His people.
It is time to stop our hedonistic, “bless-me-again-Lord” rain dances . . .
       to abandon our cheap grace . . .
       to don our work boots . . .
       to change into some clothes that might get dirty . . .
       and to start digging.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
Titus 2:11-15

We need to dig until we find theTruth,
the faith,
the repentance,
and the resolve
to become the church God desires.

It might be hard.
It might be long.
It will never be cheap.

But we can trust God.
He is faithful.

Somewhere below the very ground on which we stand in faith. . .
is a real gusher
waiting for us.