Happy New Year! Really? Have you read the news?

“Happy New Year!”

“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”

“Hope for a brand new year!”

Ok, ok. Yes, but have you read the news?

There is anxiety in the air. There is a lack of confidence and clarity about the future. Turn on the news, and within a few minutes you are left with feelings of fear and uncertainty.

Life is uncertain.

We may have hopes and expectations for the new year, but there is such uncertainly about all of it – our world, climate change, finances, relationships!

While clearing out his immense library, my dear friend and mentor gave me his copy of the 1935 classic devotional called “My Utmost for His Highest.”I treasure it because it came from him. As I flipped through the old, yellowed pages this is what the author, Oswald Chambers wrote in one of his entries:

“Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life, gracious uncertaintyis the mark of the spiritual life.”

He goes on to suggest that the nature of a spiritual life is that we can be certain in our uncertainty. We are certain in God, and God alone.

I love that. In the midst of life’s uncertainties, we can be certain of one thing and that is the unchanging Love of God! Furthermore it is God, and God alone, who can give us the strength and the wisdom we need to meet its challenges.

That theme permeates throughout Scripture, doesn’t it?

Take a look at Psalm 23 again. While life is filled with enemies and the valley of the shadow, God overwhelms them all, and God’s people find comfort and assurance in God.

We are assured that God will never leave us or abandon us. (Deuteronomy 31:6; Hebrews 13:5)

Jesus reassured his disciples that he would not abandon them. (John 14:18-20)

Paul declares: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen (what is certain), but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16)

What is his bottom line? Turn the page (in my Bible anyway) and in 2 Corinthians 5:7 he says, “For we live by faith, not by sight.”

Chambers said that the fact that we don’t know what a day will bring is often said with a sigh of sadness, but that for the Christian it should be “an expression of breathless anticipation.”

What is God going to do today? This year? Surprise is God’s gift to you.

Chambers concluded:

“We are not uncertain of God, but uncertain of what He is going to do next. If we are only certain in our beliefs, we get dignified and severe and have the bane of finality about our views; but when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.”

That is my prayer for you for 2020. Uncertainty is inevitable, but we are responsible with how we respond. I pray that your life will be so aligned with God that 2020 is a year of gracious uncertainty.