Elizabeth Silver knows uncertainty. Her six-month-old baby had a stroke, and the weeks and months that followed were nerve-racking. It took a year for the baby to recover, but every day seemed to whisper uncertainty.
In recent months, she has spoken to people about pandemic times. Their conversations revealed most people were unconcerned about illness, finances, or death. They were afraid…of uncertainty.
She wrote:
How we approach uncertainty in our health is a litmus test for how we approach life. Uncertainty is living outside of life and within it. It is the baseline of experience, of joy, of energy, of possibility, of fear. And uncertainty—especially in a pandemic—reflects how we as a society and we as individuals are.
When she talked to physicians, their concern was a “challenge” and “reality.” They knew something about the virus, but not everything. They said, “The difficulty now lies in convincing the rest of us that uncertainty is something we can and must live with.”
We live in a world where we crave certainty but live with uncertainty. Even Christians have no lock on knowing. The difference is in response. When you don’t know, do you worry?
Jesus reminds us of the futility of anxiety over uncertainty.
“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:27)
And his answer? It is not to try to know the unknowable. Live with what you know today. “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Live today and let the Lord take care of the tomorrows. You sleep better at night and live better in the day.
-Robert G. Taylor-
