Three things I have learned.
Life is unstable: things change; life is unpredictable: we don’t know what happens next; life is unfair: we don’t always get what we (think) we deserve.
If things were different we might imagine that life would be easier. A stable, predictable, fair world seems desirable, to me at least.
But it’s not the world we have got.
God’s intended world, described with poetic beauty by Isaiah, is a world where “the wolf and the lamb will live together;… The cow will graze near the bear… The lion will eat hay like a cow.” It’s a world where “nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for as the waters fill the sea, so the earth will be filled with people who know the Lord.” (Isiaah 11)
It’s a beautiful world. More stable; more predictable; more at peace – and much more than fair!
But it’s not our world.
Not yet anyway. It’s coming: but not yet.
Our lives are lived in a world which, for now, is at war with God’s purposes. Jesus’ close friend, John, describes the context for our lives: “We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19).
So how do we navigate our lives as Christians in such a space? How do we live with confidence, in an unstable, unpredictable and unfair world?
To live in that sort of world requires us to get our bearings from outside of the world itself. If we seek our security from an unstable world, we will become unstable! We need a source of security: something – or better someONE – that doesn’t change; who is reliable and who is fair.
In short, we need someone we can trust.
That’s where God comes in. Not a distant God who we vaguely ‘believe’ in, but a close, hand-holding, life-supporting God, who holds our hands and guides us through this war-zone we call home.
The shape of life as a Christian, is a shape of trust. Our confidence is not in our ability to plan our way to a more stable future, or predict how the future might take shape for us, but by trusting God in the middle of the gale that blows, with greater or lesser strength, through all of our lives.
There’s a lot that I don’t know.
I don’t know how my life may change in the future: but I can trust God never to leave me to face it alone.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings, but I can face the prospect of both delight and disappointment trusting God’s care.
I don’t know if and when life will treat me fairly: but I can trust God’s justice and final vindication.
Like the Apostle Paul facing an uncertain future in his prison cell, we may feel we have little control over our lives, but we can still have great confidence in the God who loves us. With Paul we can say, “I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return.”
Trust is powerfully expressed in the worship song Oceans. The song is a great favourite, perhaps because it is very honest about life. Stability and predictability are not in view, but rather, we find God’s grace “in deepest waters.. Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me”. When life gets incomprehensibly overwhelming, and “when oceans rise” the Christian has a resource that the world does not know: a Friend who has “never failed and who won’t start now”.
Trust is the anchor for a soul caught in the real world’s oceans. The more powerfully we feel the effects of life in a disordered world, the more we need to pray:
“Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Saviour”.
Unpredictable. Unstable. Unfair. And yet, unsinkable!