Embracing Uncertainty
By Christopher Schweickert, Global Encounters team leader
Our two-vehicle caravan wound up the twisty road somewhere in the Chiapas jungle, heading towards a remote village. It was the first time out there for most of us. I peered at the steep green hillsides and wondered what lay within. Thoughts of snakes, bugs, and cartoons all mingled uneasily in my mind. “What’s out there – can you just walk through that?” I asked our host Nathan. He replied, “You want to take the team on a hike?” “Uh, ok,” I said, not expecting things to develop that way that fast.Ten minutes later we were on foot and tumbling down muddy hillsides, slogging through a creek, greeting some interesting bugs, and clambering through ferns under a tall canopy of green things. The Chiapas rainforest has more species of bromeliads than anywhere in the world, Nathan said.
That’s where I first learned that you never know what’s around the corner with Nathan in the jungle. It’s the glorious spontaneity of life that you can’t and shouldn’t try to script. “I being in the way, the Lord led me…” (Gen. 24:27). “A man plans his way, but God directs his steps.” (Prov. 16:9.) “We are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does a man hope for what he sees?” (Rom. 8:24.)Why is God so disruptive? What to do with such uncertainty: reject, tolerate, or embrace?I increasingly prefer to approach a query about God from the trusting assumption that His ways are more about our benefit than our behavior: e.g., “the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Think Lover, not Teacher. And ask, why don’t we know more about the future? What value do we gain only because of the uncertainty? Could there be a reason to not just tolerate, but even embrace it? Would life be as fun if we knew the whole story in advance?
A wise minister observed, “Because of Christ we are not a people of timetables or charts or predictions but a people of relationships with God and with each other. We leave the future in God’s hands. We might as well because the future is in His hands whether we leave it there or not.” (Rev. Earl Palmer, “Time,” 11/23/2009.) Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than south of the U.S. border, where time is a loosely regarded concept.“Take no thought for the morrow,” is the unsettling liberation from Jesus. And take reassurance in two of the most lavish instances of His extravagance: birds, and flowers. He feeds the birds, and clothes the flowers – and gloriously so. (See Matt. 6:24-34.)
Now, the spontaneity to embrace the uncertain is not a passionless resignation to a predetermined destiny. It grows best out of hope, out of deeply rooted plans, like bromeliads on trees in Chiapas. Desire is that essential and proprietary fuel that powers the individual life that distinguishes you from the other billions on the planet. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” (Prov. 13:12.) “The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul” (Prov. 13:19).To those hopes and plans, I believe God adds the occasional twist of uncertainty to surprise us with His goodness, loosen us of dependencies, comfort us with His presence, make life more fun, and afford us a gift to Him of perhaps the most valuable thing we can return – the desires of our heart.
Christopher Schweickert has done several Global Encounters trips. Two of his favorite places to visit are Switzerland, where they make clocks, and Chiapas, where they often ignore them.