“Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.” – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
Recently, the little place I had been renting for many years got sold out from under me. Then, within days, I fell victim to a phone banking scam and all my limited saving disappeared in an instant. The very next day my old grumpy alley cat, who I’ve been a veritable slave to for years, up and died, and went to whatever in heaven that old grumpy alley cats go. Probably, I suspect, very close to the throne or sleeping on it. Weeping and devastated, I could only wonder what on earth next.
So, what about faith? Of course, my little troubles are nothing compared to so much devastation and calamity that people are suffering all over the world every day. But I’ve heard it said there’s no pain like your own pain. To struggle through such calamities, our faith must be something more than a flimsy reed. It must have depth and weight. It must be an absolute dependence that whatever the circumstances, whatever the earthly uncertainty, God’s got this.
This is not a simple thing to maintain. It requires the daily practice of turning wholeheartedly to God and letting go. No one I know finds this easy because we’re up against a mighty foe, the ego-centric self. The default position of my self-centered ego is not dependence on the living God, who is love and compassion. Rather, it is to seek, by whatever means necessary, security in the material world. It is easy enough to say, when life is peachy and all my little plans are falling nicely into place, that I am a person of faith. But the true litmus test comes when things fall apart, and all bets are off, when uncertainty takes a hold, and rocks your little world entirely.
This is when faith gets real. Because it’s in the uncertainty of life, when the incessant craving of the ego for security is unfulfilled, that dependence on God finds true meaning. Perversely, it is in the tough times of suffering and uncertainty that God-sufficiency, not self-sufficiency, gets rooted in our very core. Who knows, maybe, just maybe, that’s why we constantly face uncertainty, because it is such a profound driver of faith that works.
A sober booze hound, called Chuck C. Said:
Who needs God when you’ve got a million bucks.
It’s everywhere apparent that material wealth creates an insatiable desire for more of the same. It is no accident that mystics of whatever time or stripe embrace radical renunciation. As the Nazarene says:
You cannot serve God and wealth (Matt 6: 24).
Or to put it another way, we can’t claim dependence on God, while placing our everyday dependence on the material world. If our allure is for the bright and shiny things of the world, our dependence on God will be little more than perhaps a pleasant illusion.
Like children longing for the certainty of our mothers whom we run from uncertainty like a plague, seeking this way and that, to banish it from our lives. But there is no escape. Uncertainty is a part and parcel of life; we must embrace it or suffer the consequences of seeking certainty in all the wrong places. God-dependence does not remove uncertainty from our lives, but enables us to walk through it with grace and courage. Let go and let God, comrades, She’s got this!
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart