Sermon quotes on uncertainty
Eugene Peterson
The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.
Andy Stanley
Uncertainty is not an indication of poor leadership; it underscores the need for leadership.… The nature of leadership demands that there always be an element of uncertainty. The temptation is to think, ‘If I were a good leader, I would know exactly what to do.’ Increased responsibility means dealing more with more intangibles and therefore more complex uncertainty. Leaders can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will not follow fuzzy leadership.
James Hollis
Your ego prefers certainty to uncertainty, predictability over surprise, clarity over ambiguity. Your ego always wants to shroud over the barely audible murmurings of the heart.
What Matters Most, Avery 2009, p.95.
Anthony Bourdain
I’m pretty sure that cheese and sausage are good. Other than that, it’s a world of confusion and uncertainty.
Dorothy Day
It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay his head. “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride in sharing the honor) that the disciples supped the seashore and wandered through cornfields picking the ears from the stalks wherewith to make their frugal meals.
Editorial in the first issue of The Catholic Worker, May 1993
Rainer Maria Rilke
I would like to beg you… as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Dick Ryan
Whatever happens to me in life,
I must believe that somewhere,
In the mess or madness of it all,
There is a sacred potential—
possibility for wondrous redemption
In the embracing of all that is.
Straight from the Heart: Reflections from Twentieth-Century Mystics ed. Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001, p.85.
Shelly Miller
Uncertainty provides rescue from being stuck in the familiar ways of life that keep us from moving forward into the purposes of God. Wandering into the wilderness of the unknown is God’s divine reorientation, from what we know in the present to what God knows about the future.
Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.
Shelly Miller
Reframe uncertainty through the lens of the certainty of God’s love, and interpret current events from the perspective of promise that is never revoked.
Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.
Shelly Miller
The fear of uncertainty is rooted in this belief: God won’t meet me in the way I am desperate for him to show up. And our greatest certitude is this: God is already in the room.
Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.
Anthony Bourdain
I’m pretty sure that cheese and sausage are good. Other than that, it’s a world of confusion and uncertainty.
Dorothy Day
It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay his head. “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride in sharing the honor) that the disciples supped the seashore and wandered through cornfields picking the ears from the stalks wherewith to make their frugal meals.
Editorial in the first issue of The Catholic Worker, May 1993
Rainer Maria Rilke
I would like to beg you… as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Letters to a Young Poet
Dick Ryan
Whatever happens to me in life,
I must believe that somewhere,
In the mess or madness of it all,
There is a sacred potential—
possibility for wondrous redemption
In the embracing of all that is.
Straight from the Heart: Reflections from Twentieth-Century Mystics ed. Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001, p.85.
Shelly Miller
Uncertainty provides rescue from being stuck in the familiar ways of life that keep us from moving forward into the purposes of God. Wandering into the wilderness of the unknown is God’s divine reorientation, from what we know in the present to what God knows about the future.
Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.
Shelly Miller
The fear of uncertainty is rooted in this belief: God won’t meet me in the way I am desperate for him to show up. And our greatest certitude is this: God is already in the room.
Searching for Certainty: Finding God in the Disruptions of Life, Bethany House Publishers, 2020.
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