Almighty God, we confess our need of Your presence and Your guidance. We each have our hopes and expectations for what lies ahead, but only You can give us the strength and the wisdom we need. In life...
Loving God, we come to You uncertain of what tomorrow brings. We are given constant reminders through Your Word and creation of Your abundant knowledge and love, yet we still question Your plan for ou...
Holy God, we can be so full of fear at times – afraid of the unknown; afraid of what is beyond our control; afraid of what is strange to us. And we know that fear stops us in our tracks, hinders our a...
God, our rock and refuge, there are plenty of things that we allow to erode our faith in you. When life gets stormy, we let our uncertainty cloud our trust in you. We think we know better and start re...
As the people of Judah cried out to God in their time of catastrophe, we remember that we, too, can bring our burdens before God. Let us join together in confession, confident that God hears us. Lord...
Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are always there in times of transition or trial, times of uncertainty and anxiety, or times of accomplishment and celebration. You do not leave us nor fo...
Lord Jesus – You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your coming every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumbl...
Psalm 27:4, 1 Chronicles 16:29, Philippians 4:6-7, John 4:23-24, Matthew 11:28, Psalm 100:4, Hebrews 10:24-25
Thank you Lord God for the opportunity of worship, for the freedom to be amongst your family meeting together in your house, and in the warmth of your embrace Thank you that in worship we can put asid...
2 Corinthians 12:7-10, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Matthew 5:9, Mark 4:35-41, Philippians 4:7, Isaiah 26:3, 1 Kings 17:8-16
Go in the peace of Christ that is beyond our understanding, and plant this peace by word and deed in this world of turmoil and uncertainty, depending on that all-sufficient grace. Amen.
Eternal God, we recognize that Your ways are mysterious. Teach us to be still and to wait for You. We confess our sinfulness, our need for control, and our discomfort with the unknown. Instead of turn...
Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divining, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys...
In this little thought experiment, Harvard psychologist David Ropeik demonstrates just how easily our fear of uncertainty can make us as we imagine driving a car with our eyes closed: Imagine driving...
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your...
James 1:27, Romans 12:17-19, Zechariah 7:9-10, Psalm 82:3-4, Proverbs 21:3
In his 2008 book, Just Courage, Gary Haugen, a lawyer by training, describes an interesting legal precedent known as “void for vaugeness.” Haugen used the precedent to illustrate how vague ideas of Bi...
The Land of What-Ifs is a tempting place to dwell. It is also a dangerous place to be. And chances are, if you flipped to this page, you’re stepping foot into its territory. Before you even pull the c...
Allow the presence of God to be the bridge through your uncertainty. The axis of uncertainty is disorientation, and let’s face it, who wants to be spinning in all directions while in transition? Resea...
We may not see tangible evidence of where we are going, what God is doing, or how we are growing, but wintering is essential preparation for life to flourish. Uncertainty, like winter, clears the land...
I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...
Matthew 7:1-2, John 7:24, Proverbs 3:5, Ecclesiastes 7:9
A man named Jack was driving on a dark country road one night when he got a flat tire. He saw a cabin in the woods and began to walk towards it. He told himself that the person who answered the door w...
“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose its often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: a...
During a retreat at the Taizé compound in France, a young American shared a remarkable discovery. He said: “Back home, surrounded by all my possessions, I often feel uncertain about many things. Here,...
Fishermen with any experience on the Sea of Galilee knew that the optimal time to catch fish was during the night in shallow water. During the day, the fish dove deep, where it was far more difficult ...
A man sentenced to death obtained a reprieve by assuring the king he would teach his majesty’s horse to fly within the year–on the condition that if he didn’t succeed, he would be put to death at the ...
Between the probable and proved there yawns A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns Our only hope: to le...
In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are...
For many of us, life can easily become disorienting and discouraging. Existential questions often emerge that never have before. As stressful as modern life can be, it is somewhat comforting to know t...
John 10:27, Psalm 143:10, James 1:5, Isaiah 42:16, Proverbs 2:6, Psalm 32:8, Colossians 3:15
We’re afraid when we’re suddenly caught off our guard and don’t know what to do. We’re afraid when our presuppositions and assumptions no longer account for what we’re up against, and we don’t know wh...
You fear you won’t. We all do. We fear that the depression will never lift, the yelling will never stop, the pain will never leave…We wonder: Will this gray sky ever brighten ? This load ever lighten...
When I graduated from college I was given one of the greatest opportunities of my young life. A group of my friends were told that if we were able to purchase a flight to the Cayman Islands, we would ...
Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...