By the Way: God is with us in the uncertainty

By Jeff Decelle on December 31, 2022.

We are at another New Year’s – that time to look back at what’s behind us and look ahead at what might be coming. I look back at what’s been a difficult year for so many – inflation and rising prices, ongoing wars, respiratory viruses, unrest, grief – you name it. Even with the COVID pandemic (mostly) behind us, life doesn’t seem to be any more certain as we open a new calendar.

All of the gospels tell a story of Jesus with his disciples in a boat during a storm. The wind and the waves are swamping them, and the disciples are rightly terrified. In the midst of the smashing water and the driving gale, Jesus is asleep. As they wake him up with a cry of “Lord, save us!” he calls out and commands the storm to stop. When everything becomes calm, the disciples are amazed at Jesus’s power, and he says to them: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

I don’t hear those questions as a reprimand – as in “Why don’t you have more faith?”- but instead as an invitation. In my own life, it’s been much easier to look back when life has calmed down and then connect the dots of God’s faithfulness. It’s so much harder when the storm is still raging around. But that is Jesus’s invitation: having been through times of uncertainty before, to trust in God’s faithfulness when we find ourselves in the middle of those times again.

Christmas celebrates God’s arrival in a baby born among us – the promised Emmanuel, a name that means God-with-us. I can only guess the storms of your life, and the uncertainty that’s particular to you this New Year’s. But whether you are uneasily looking back or anxiously pondering what may be – may you remember the promise of Emmanuel -God-always-with-us, and the invitation to trust God’s faithfulness no matter the uncertainty around us.

Rev. Jeff Decelle is the pastor for Unity Lutheran Church

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