I was talking to a girl friend the other day and my mother’s voice came out.
“Stop trying to figure it all out.”
I think my generation has a real issue with wanting to know how it all ends before it even begins. Maybe it’s because we feel a bit like the rug was pulled out from under our feet. Somewhere in this lifetime we realised that the legacy we have been left is one of uncertainty. Certainly we have many options, many opportunities and advantages that did not exist before. But we also certainly have much less commitment, less follow through, a world in which many of us question whether we want to hand down to a new generation.
I will leave my soliloquy of the state of humanity, the world and why it got this way to another day…I speak only today of the effect it has had on us.
Because of all the uncertainty we live in, we seem to find it hard to commit, plan, take risks until we think we have the end figured out.
Except we can’t. We don’t.
And although I believe that there are many benefits to living a life where we spend our money on experiences and not things, where we explore the world, where we open our homes, our cars, our couches to people, we are still so afraid. We are afraid of stock market crashes, losing our jobs, high divorce rates and broken hearts. Because many of the things that were once stable are now uncertain, it makes seemingly normal decisions of our parents, grandparents and generations before us, be questioned and even left unanswered.
So, then how do we jump?
How do we decide to take a leap of faith?
Honestly. I am simply glad that, as followers of Christ we have been given the Holy Spirit.
In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Romans 8:26-27
“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. John 16:13
Some would call it intuition, some “that feeling deep inside”, but I know that in those moments when I don’t know, when I am afraid and I ask…
I get the answers.
In times where I don’t know what is next, or I am waiting on answers…I breathe in, stop, slow down and ask.
And in an uncertain world…
For that I am grateful.
