No Way to Know (Friday Devotional)

 

Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

- Proverbs 19:21

As I write this on Wednesday afternoon, I don’t know exactly what the next few days will hold. All signs point to a nasty winter storm arriving in a few hours, but it’s Texas, so that could always change. Should bad weather arrive as predicted, the governor has assured everyone that the power grid will not let us down the way it did last year—but the bipartisan consensus appears to be, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Maybe this ice storm will be no big deal, or maybe it’ll be a rerun of last year’s catastrophe. There’s no way to know for sure.

Of course, the ice storm isn’t the only thing on my mind, because my family has been in COVID quarantine all week. Our symptoms have all been mild—sore throats, runny noses, fatigue—but if there’s one thing we’ve all learned about this coronavirus, it’s not to underestimate it. Chances are we’ll be back to normal by the time you’re reading this. But again, there’s no way to be sure.

More and more these days, that seems to be the common refrain. Things we were once able to count on, assumptions we used to be able to safely make, now seem up in the air. The only certainty is uncertainty.

When the world feels so uncertain, the soul longs all the more for something stable, something unchanging, something solid. We want to know that, even when we’re spinning, somebody has things under control. So what a comfort to know that, whatever plans we make and however they end up, God’s will endures.

We get so wrapped up in our own little worlds sometimes that we think we are in total control of our lives, that our success and happiness and even righteousness are solely dependent upon ourselves. But God’s Word frees us from the misconception of self-centeredness; it reminds us that we are called to be servants, not gods. It is through humility that we find freedom from the weight of uncertainty.

There’s no telling what tomorrow will bring, to say nothing of the next few weeks or months. But you can rest assured that God is in control, even and especially when you are not. Peace in this life doesn’t come from trying to control an uncontrollable world—it comes by submitting to the one who holds that world in his hands.