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.

:)