Embrace the Unknown

 Merry Christmas Eve my friends!!  My oh my what a year it has been. I can say confidently that 2020 has been the weirdest year of my whole life. I told a friend last night that it’s uncanny to me to think that the entirety of humanity has experienced a year full of turmoil and upheaval and of loss and of pain right alongside each other. I’ve never in my life seen anything like this. I’m certain you haven’t either!

Each year I start thinking around Thanksgiving about my Christmas Eve post. This is year #8 that I’m writing one!  I ask the Lord for a word...a thought...to then let my writing mind go to work. This year I realized that God has been whispering something all year long to me...”Rachel...WAIT AND SEE!”

In a year filled with chaos and confusion. In a year even for our own little family of big changes, tough and overwhelming choices, frustration, compounding unknowns...He tells me “Rachel...WAIT AND SEE!”  I’m not gonna lie...when you feel as though you’re in a pressure cooker environment and your “decision making muscle” is spent and weak, being told to WAIT is just not really what you want to hear...

But our God works so well within our unknowns doesn’t He? He excels within the mystery. He doesn’t require our understanding and He certainly doesn’t require our approval of His plans before He marches right on through with them. He doesn’t ask us what we think...He doesn’t wait until we are “ready”. He says “Child you have no idea. Just sit back and trust me...I’m gonna give you every next step...just WAIT AND SEE!”

And when I think about what His coming to earth was like...it follows that pattern to a T. 400 years of the Jews waiting for the Messiah. Not a word, so it seemed, from God about His coming. And then one night Gabriel shows up to this simple girl, then follows up with a visit to her betrothed, and then out He came in the simplest place, to the simplest people, in the simplest way. The Son of God!!  Right in the midst of “unknowns”, of “less than ideal”, of “chaos”, of “confusion”, of “the worst case scenario”. He showed up and did exactly what He said He would do...

Can you imagine what Mary must’ve been thinking?  When all this time she is carrying Jesus...knowing who she was carrying...and when the time comes to deliver Him, God says “Hey that barn over there looks like the perfect spot!” As a mama myself I can imagine she thought, “God what in the WORLD are you doing???  I can’t deliver ANY baby in the floor of a barn...much less YOU!!” But it happened...just as He wanted it to happen...and all along it was part of His perfect plan...

The saying goes that the odds of Jesus fulfilling every single prophesy written in the Old Testament (all 16 of them) would be akin to gathering 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 silver dollars (which would more than cover the state of Texas) and asking a blind man to walk out and pick the one marked silver dollar on the first try with no help. Impossible. But God did it with Jesus!  He did the impossible just as He said He would. And humanity just sat back scratching its head thinking, “This can’t be real...”. In some ways, isn’t humanity still saying that about Jesus??  

But we serve a God who does the “impossible”. He tells us that with Him ALL things are possible. He tells us His plans are for GOOD and not to harm us. To give us hope and a future. He tells us that He makes springs bubble up in dry wastelands, He gives dead things LIFE, He makes a way through the wilderness, He opens the sea, He moves mountains!  And our role in all that?  WAIT AND SEE WHAT I WILL DO!!  

Our action point? Prayer. Prayer isn’t treating God like a genie in a bottle...asking for this that or the other and promising good behavior to get it. Prayer is a relationship. A joining with God as HE accomplishes His plans...a getting on His wavelength so that you can SEE the marvelous things He’s done and is doing. Without prayer...we miss it. Without prayer, we are the Bethlehem villagers asleep in their homes on the night Jesus was born...completely unaware of the miracle God has performed right under our noses! God moves and works and doesn’t need our “participation” to make His purposes happen...what He asks for is a relationship built on TRUST...

So this year...as we see the strangest year in history come to a close...I challenge you to WAIT AND SEE. Commit yourself to prayer and pondering on God’s Word. WAIT AND SEE how He will take all this chaos and confusion and STILL accomplish His purpose. WAIT AND SEE how He makes all things work together for our good...even the awful, heartbreaking, painful stuff. He Himself IS love, IS good, IS holiness. And He only asks us for a willingness to be still and KNOW that HE alone is God and He is sovereign, righteous, and perfect...

Merry Christmas y’all. Embrace the unknowns and find God within them...