Up until last Thursday my planner was filled with the lectures, labs, and meetings I needed to attend. I had pre-planned every day down to the hour, deciding what I would accomplish, who I would visit, and how I would spend my time. Now, I find myself looking at empty pages and wondering what to do with myself.

I have friends who are graduating this year. We had discussed all the things we wanted to do one last time. There were dinners to cook, achievements to celebrate, places to visit and pictures to take. There was time we wanted to savor … and then suddenly, it was gone.

All of this has made me wonder whether I’m living for my own plans, or for God’s. And if I’m living for myself then the Bible has something to say:

“Look here, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.’ How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog – it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, ‘If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.’ Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil” (James 4:13-16)

Now more than ever, it’s clear that we don’t know what our life will be like tomorrow. We put so much hope in our plans, and yet they are so fragile. And that’s hard. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with not knowing and not being in control. I know I’m not the only one who will doubt God’s goodness in a time like this. And so, I want to share what God has taught me in the hopes that you will be encouraged too.

Not Knowing

Like Solomon, we often pray to God asking for wisdom. It seems like a righteous prayer, and yet I’ve realized that what we usually want isn’t wisdom at all - it’s knowledge. We want to know what’s going to happen. We want to know where to go and what to do. But that’s not the kind of wisdom God promises. In fact, time and time again the Bible recounts how God gives His people very little knowledge of what is to come. And part of the beauty in that is that it forces us to follow.

In Genesis 12 God calls Abraham saying, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). He tells Abraham to go, but He doesn’t say where. Other times God tells His people to stay. He leads the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, guiding and protecting them as a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.  And “in all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out – until the day it lifted” (Exodus 40:36-37).

Perhaps, right now, God is telling us to stay. He’s telling us to rest and invest in the place we find ourselves in. We sing about this often: “Where you go I’ll go, where you stay I’ll stay, when you move I’ll move, I will follow you.” But do we really mean that? Are we willing to stay? Are we willing to follow? In this season of not knowing I pray that we will learn to be still, and that in that stillness we would know God (Psalm 46:10).

We might not know much, but we can always know Him.

Losing Control

Apart from not knowing, one of the hardest parts of this season is feeling that I’m not in control. This perplexes me, because I’m never in control! But the way our world usually works, it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we are. Fortunately, there is someone who is still in control, and He has promises for us.

When God is about to lead His people out of Egypt, Moses encourages them saying, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today” (Exodus 14:13). I say the same thing to you now. Don’t be afraid. Stand firm. Even in this, we will see the deliverance God will bring us.

The interesting thing about God’s control is that He often tests our trust before exercising it. After 40 years in the desert God was about to lead the Israelites into the promised land, but first they had to cross the Jordan. Ultimately, God does part the waters, but first He tells the priests to “go and stand in the river” (Joshua 3:8). Perhaps God is calling us to step into the river before He parts the waters. Perhaps He is calling us to step out onto the waves before He calms the storm.

I want to finish here by recognizing that the hardest part in trusting God is the subsequent stillness that should follow: “The LORD will fight for you; you need only be still” (Exodus 14:14). It’s hard to be still. It’s hard to slow down and trust that we are in good hands, that we don’t have to (and cannot) control things on our own. But God doesn’t leave us alone in this either. “My presence will go with you,” He promises, “And I will give you rest” (Exodus 33:14).

Reflections on Ecclesiastes

I’m reading Ecclesiastes at the moment, and I thought it would be fitting to finish with a few things that book – and COVID-19 – have reminded me of. The first is that in light of eternity, all our worldy works and plans are futile: “I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

In light of this I’m encouraged by Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Solomon rightly says that our toil is meaningless, but Paul reminds us that our labour in the Lord is not in vain. I was so encouraged by what Barb shared about homeschooling. She described it as “extended parenting,” and urged us to be intentional about making this time Christ-centered. This is the kind of work that will not be in vain. These are the kinds of plans that God will establish (Proverbs 16:3). And He has given us so much opportunity to invest in them now!

Finally, in this time, I have been struck by a call to contentment. In Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 Solomon describes a kind of person who “accepts their lot and is happy in their toil… God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart” (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20). That’s the kind of person I want to be. Amid all this time I want to be occupied with gladness. I want to be like Paul when he writes, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:12-13).

And so, above all else I pray that we won’t try to weather these waves alone. Let’s abide in God and let’s bear with one another. That’s what our church family is there for.