Reflection on trusting God amidst an uncertain time

Hanna and I went into the hospital on March 16. The day before, we had been in worship. The Wednesday prior, I had led the Wednesday Night Downtown Lenten worship service. The previous weekend, we even went out for a date. Suddenly, our lives and everything else seemed to change. Little Edmund was born on March 17, and when we came home on March 19, the city was shut down. It was surreal. I felt like I was living out the script of a movie or stepping back into history.

The transition home was less disruptive than it might have been. However, there were questions we had to consider that didn’t seem to have good answers including: how do we keep this little one safe? Are we OK with grandparents coming to hold their grandson? If not, how do we tell them and how long do we make them wait? Is curbside actually a safer way to shop than going into a store? These were minor questions in the grand scheme of a global shutdown with people losing their lives and their livelihoods, but what I began to feel in that first week home was fear.

Now I would not consider myself a fearful person. I’m a pastor, right? Pastors trust God. We don’t feel fear (ha!). But something about coming home with a helpless newborn for whom I was responsible in the midst of a pandemic brought me to a place of unrest that I have not often experienced. I was even afraid of myself. For days after we came home from the hospital, I analyzed every breath, trying to discern any signs of COVID-19 that I might inadvertently pass on to my son.

I was experiencing a loss of control. I don’t think I am alone in this. In some ways, the whole world has been realizing how little control we have. Despite our technology, medical capabilities and all our progress, it did not take much to upend our routines.

I’ve been reading through the book of James with a group of college students, and in 4:13-15, James writes, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ – yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

I don’t know if you find this verse immediately comforting, but it speaks an important truth. We do not control what tomorrow will bring – God does. This, in part, is the good news of Scripture. God is the Lord of tomorrow and He is able to work redemptively for our good, even in the midst of difficult and uncertain circumstances.

“He is able to work redemptively for our good, even in the midst of difficult and uncertain circumstances.”

– Rev. Dan Hutchinson

As I have wrestled with my own response to the events in our world, I have reflected on two questions: do I truly trust God with my life and how has God called me to be faithful right here and now? It’s easy enough to say that I trust God when I don’t have to trust God. But what about when I have no other option? Faith in God is never theoretical. It’s always situational. How do I live faithfully with the time that God has given to me, knowing that God is sovereign? Faith and discipleship are not put on hiatus because there is a pandemic. Obedience does not get sidelined because we are in quarantine. I see this time as an invitation to think creatively and evaluate if the rhythms of our lives are pleasing to God.

I have loved seeing the ways in which the people of God are living out their faith during this time. My prayer for us is that we would learn to trust that God loves us instead of being governed by fear. I pray that we would relinquish our desire to control tomorrow and instead ask, “How can I be faithful with the time God has given to me?”