ADVENT/CHRISTMAS/EPIPHANY 2007
From the editor…
The Joy and Challenge of Not Knowing
“Oh Dad, there is just so much I do not know.”
We dropped our oldest child Abigail off at her first year of College in
August. You may remember that my mother died of cancer this past
March. It is a year of rites of passage in the family.
Not long ago Abigail was in our den with her mother and me, expressing
her anxiety the day before she left to go to school. One thing
after another was named, and then it built into a crescendo, which
ended with the quote with which I began this column. She was so
very frustrated with how little she knew about what her future would
look like.
Who could blame her? She didn’t know what her roommate’s
personality was, what her major would be, who she would end up being
friends with, whether she would like her professors, what she would
think of Ohio (she is attending Wooster), and on and on and on.
Hold that thought, I said to my daughter. For it was only the day
before that I was having my daily devotions and reading in Hebrews 11
when a verse jumped off the page at me:
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which
he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where
he was to go” (verse 8).
I spent a lot of time thinking about what that verse really meant in
Abraham’s own experience. He did not know if he would even make
it to the place, he did not know what it would be like when he got
there, he did not know how long he would stay, or what the implications
for his family would be, and his list, too, was very long. But
nevertheless he went in faith, for faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
So instead of not knowing being something to lament, it is something to
be embraced. For if we did know all that we want to, we would not
need to depend on God but on ourselves, putting us on exactly the wrong
road when it comes to discipleship.
It is a shame there is not more preaching on and study of the book of
Ecclesiastes these days. Vanity of vanities, the writer says
about life. The word in Hebrew is a word used for vapor; no
matter how hard he tries, the vapor of what he sees always eludes the
writer’s grasp as he tries to fathom it. Life is apparently
inscrutable in Ecclesiastes. It is not known how God is working
his purpose out.
According to Ecclesiastes life is not so much a problem to be solved as
a mystery to be lived. Not knowing is a good thing that drives us
back to faith, back to our knees before the one who made Heaven and
earth.
So I told my daughter that I was right with her in struggling with not
knowing. I didn’t know what exactly would happen the next day,
where and how I would ultimately end up serving, how her younger sister
would like her new school, whether my diocese would ever even get
another bishop, and my list, too, was very long.
But there is one thing we DO know about the future, I told her.
God is there. And the God who holds the future holds us in his
hands right now as he calls us to go out in faith in the midst of so
many unknowns every single day.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr. Harmon by e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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