My oldest daughter graduated from college last week. The speaker at her commencement quoted Oswald Chambers concerning what he called "gracious uncertainty." The idea stuck in my head, and I looked it up when I returned home. He spoke of certainty being the mark of the commonsense life. We all want to be certain of what is next, and that if we act in a certain way, predictable results will follow. Certainty is very appealing, but while it may be the mark of the commonsense life, it is not the mark of the spiritual life. That's where gracious uncertainty comes in. Gracious, because all that we are or have is a result of God's grace. Uncertainty, because as we abandon ourselves to God, He begins to fill our lives with unexpected surprises. We are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what is ahead. Indeed, the only thing we can be certain of is God. Chambers wrote, "But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said '...believe also in Me' (John 14:1), not, 'Believe certain things about Me'. Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in - but you can be certain that He will come."
I hesitated in updating because I hoped to have some exciting progress to report in this upcoming move. I do not have that. We continue to pack (throw away, mostly) up the house and prepare for the move. Arrangements for our house here are made, and nothing has happened that leads us to believe we are not supposed to go to Williston this summer. But neither has any progress been made (as least that we can see) toward us having any kind of housing there. We spoke to a "friend of a friend" who lives in Williston on the phone, and he confirmed for us that we really should come with a trailer or 5th wheel camper that will hold up to the ND winter, but we have neither that nor something to pull it yet. We have looked at 4WD trucks, but haven't moved on that yet. Since we turned over control of our lives to Christ (many years ago), He has asked us to do many things we never could have done without Him, and He has ALWAYS provided all the support we would need to complete the task at hand. He has provided support financially, emotionally, physically, and in ways we never could have imagined. He has NEVER provided that support early, but always right when we needed it. I believe He will do that in this situation as well. We are certain that God is telling us to move to North Dakota, and only He could have changed our hearts and made us want to move to a colder climate than we already live in.
As I was reading this over, it occurred to me that God may not provide for this move in the way I hope he will. He may expect us to go without housing arranged. That would be a real test of our faith, and would seem unwise. But would it be? Would it be unwise to do what God called us to do? We would look like fools. Ah, that's the tough part. We don't want to look like we don't have it all together. It would hurt our pride. Stay tuned. You may get to see us look like fools. Because we will do what God has clearly called us to do.
