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Certainty Among Uncertainties - The equation becomes positive when we include faith.
Most of us do not enjoy uncertainty when it comes to the immediate future. We like to plan, and we usually strive to prepare adequately for whatever we will do or might receive. Depending upon the importance we attach to our participation in, or passive reception of, coming activities, the higher our anxiety will likely be when we are uncertain about what might happen or how we might respond. Uncertainty often equates to troubling thoughts and uncomfortable feelings.
Certainty, when we have it, or at least for as long as it seems to match well with reality as far as we know, brings satisfaction and encourages us to proceed confidently into whatever we foresee as next. However, we know from much experience that we cannot create certainty, because it is an honest response to facts that are available to us, including our history of looking ahead to the events or activities in which we were likely to participate. We cannot control certainty, nor can we regulate uncertainty.
Certainty among uncertainties appears to be a contradiction, and it is, only if we keep all considerations about it within the restrictive bounds of what we can do on our own. As soon as we include our relationship with God to become a part of how we look at both certainty and uncertainty, we discover other ways of thinking that will strongly influence how we feel about certainty and the lack thereof. We are enabled to see our anticipated future with much improved vision, as though the lights were turned on in a dark room.
Each of us can work out the details about better handling the future according to our own ways of relating with God, but we can all start with the belief that God is all-good and loves us wholly and entirely just as we are. The certainty of even that belief is enough to affect uncertainties so that they become less threatening and this truth promotes the realization that we can carry at least some real certainty with us into all considerations of uncertainty.
More than this, there is no troubling uncertainty about the future that we cannot share directly with God in honest prayer. In such encounters, we usually find that some uncertainties remain, but at the same time we have solid assurance that God will be with us and that we are to proceed confidently into whatever lies before us without fear of whatever remains uncertain to us.
We can rely on this: no matter how we might think, and whatever feelings might occur within us, God is Love and loves each of us in the eternal now which includes our future.
Last Updated 11/15/2025