make peace with uncertainty
When I was in junior high, my family moved to another town so my dad could enroll in graduate school. During this time, my family attended an evangelical church. It was a friendly and welcoming Protestant church community, but it was not the Mennonite Church I was used to. One week, the church sponsored a revival featuring a guest preacher. It was a school night, but my parents brought me along, or rather dragged me along, for this special revival service.
I knew what was coming: the altar call. I experienced many of these in high school and college. The altar call was an invitation at the end of service to make a public commitment to accept Jesus in your life. The congregation would sing verses to a hymn as the minister waited for us to decide.
Sitting in the sanctuary, I noticed that the minister somehow had managed to rig a gigantic chart behind the pulpit which he pulled down during his sermon. This chart, the minister explained, illustrated a sequence of events that would occur with the second coming of Christ: some people would disappear from the planet, others would face a time of terrible tribulation, Jesus would appear riding a chariot with horses, the moon would turn blood red, stars would fall out of the sky, and the sun would turn black. I don’t remember in what order.
The minister wanted to warn us that these events would happen, according to his interpretation of the scriptures, in the next five years With this frightening chart looming in front, he urged us to be ready for the second coming of Jesus in order to escape the tribulation that was about to happen. WHAT? In the next five years? I was horrified. I really wanted to go high school.
After a long service listening to the ministers’s warnings and predictions, I was in a state of panic. Then, the minister gave his altar call. He invited us to walk up to the front to be saved if we were not already saved, or if we needed to be saved again. Were we certain? My sensitive 13 year old brain, already prone to anxiety,was going down a rabbit hole trying to determine if I was certain enough and if I would be ready when Jesus came back. I steeled myself to resist the altar call. With each verse, I felt the pull to walk up to the front for certainty. With each verse I felt less sure. My mind was in a tug-of-war. The altar call seemed to last forever, verse after verse of “Just as I Am,” just kept coming for me.
The service finally ended and I was so relieved to be still sitting in the pew. The congregation then headed to the basement where rows of folding chairs were set up for people to have social conversation and punch and cookies. I sat in my chair with my cookie, frozen with anxiety. It was really challenging for me to have casual social conversation when at any moment Jesus might appear in a chariot and/or the moon turn black.
Well, obviously, the end times did not happen in the five year timeline illustrated by the minister. In fact, I have lived through several memorable predictions of the end of the word. We laughed at December 31, 1999 at midnight, but who wasn’t relieved to wake up somewhat still intact on January 1, 2000? My middle school students were frightened about December 21, 2012. According to the 8th graders, the internet and You-Tube, cataclysmic end of era events were predicted on this date by the Mayan calendar. I recognized this anxiety and I tried to reassure my students.
I learned about the life cycle of a star while teaching middle school science. The minister was right. The sun, when it starts dying in several billion years, will become engorged as its remnants burn out, turn blood red and then burn out a blackened moon.
The minister’s altar call offered me certainty. I would be saved. However, if I responded to one altar call, my teenage brain would feel uncertain again for another one. My adult brain has learned that with the questions of life and the mystery of our end of life, certainty doesn’t stick for me. Instead of seeking certainty, the challenge has become for me to practice my faith smack dab in the midst of uncertainty. Just as I am.
It took me years to make peace with the hymn, “Just as I Am.” I find it soothing now, I listened to Amy Grant sing it this morning:
“Just as I am, though tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.”
Take it or leave it suggestion #15: make peace with uncertainty
Nature soothes and reassures in the face of uncertainty.
