I Am Afraid
I find myself afraid, too. Afraid of not knowing. Afraid of not seeing. Afraid of the losses. Afraid of the hard leadership decisions. Afraid that Jesus is nowhere to be seen at certain times of the day, like before dawn. Afraid of not knowing when the waves will stop battering our global family. Afraid that this curve won’t flatten and fall. Fear comes in waves.
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Prayers for Workers:
Learning to Lament
If we believe that God wants to teach us to pray through the Psalms, then it’s clear God wants us to learn to lament. Though the biblical psalms reflect a wide variety of themes and genres, you can’t read these inspired prayers without encountering lament after lament after lament. The psalm writers felt freedom before God to be honest about all they thought and felt. At times they would rejoice with an abandon that few of us experience. Yet, at other times, the psalmists would pour out their sadness before the Lord, sharing freely their grief, their impatience, and even their anger.
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God’s Stability, God’s Faithfulness
So it is today in the midst of a pandemic. In these uncertain times, we find stability in God, the God whose faithfulness is great. Like the author of Lamentations, we freely cry out to God in our pain and confusion. Yet, remembering God’s steadfast love and daily mercies, we also confess God’s faithfulness, and therefore we have hope.
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The Stability of Your Times
When our times feel certain, when things are going as we had planned, it’s easy to trust in our circumstances or our own ability to control them. But in uncertain times, we recognize our own limitations. We realize just how much we need God to be “the stability of our times.” Only in him will we find a solid, trustworthy foundation on which to build our lives.
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Unchanging Reality in an Always Changing World
Christian faith doesn’t provide all the certainty we might prefer. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen today, or tomorrow, or the next day. Our faith doesn’t insulate us from all the change swirling around us. But Christian faith does provide a solid, trustworthy, unchanging reality upon which to base our lives.
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The Myth of Certain Times
For those of us whose worldview is shaped by Scripture, the myth of earthly certainty should not bewitch us. In Psalm 46:2-3, for example, we read: “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.” This psalm assumes the inconstant nature of the world in which we live. Moreover, we rightly infer that the continually changing nature of the physical world reflects what is also true in our cultural world. Things are in flux. Things are unstable. In such a world, certainty is a myth.
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