By the Way: Oblique reflections on current affairs

By Oz Lorentzen on March 1, 2025.

I am thinking about the “promise of spring,” which I am pretty excited about. And, thinking about how it may seem odd to use the word “promise” to refer to something that happens every year, since the nature of a promise is that it contains something uncertain.

Yet, on further reflection, that is backwards: the whole notion of promise depends upon its dependability. A promise is only as good as is the chance that the promise will be kept!

If you add too much uncertainty into that, you no longer have a promise but some form of wishful thinking.

There is uncertainty in promise, to be sure, but it cannot be so great as to violate the nature of the promise. In spring’s coming, for instance, we cannot know how soon we can get out on the golf course, see flowers popping up, witness the first robins – but that it will come, we know for sure.

What is that surety based on? Scientific understanding explains why it happens, but our certainty is based on the uniform and repeated experiences of a lifetime.

Every worthwhile promise has the same basis – a confident expectation of an outcome based on the accumulation of previous experience.

Now, there is a certain excitement from the wish, the guess, the gamble; there is an understandable psychology to “knee jerk” overreaction: but that is hardly the sort of thing that merits choices and confidence for the future.

I can see the allure of such speculating, the satisfaction of overreacting, but believe there are better ways to make choices about the future. It’s easier to just react, to guess, to gamble, that is for sure.

But the payoff on a deliberate and sustained reflection on how the world really works is the only basis for a promising future. I would encourage you to include in your reflections not only the promises based on your past but also the Promiser!

Two more promises from experience to factor into your reflections:

“There is a silver lining in every cloud.”

“This too shall pass.”

Oz Lorentzen is the pastor at St. Barnabas Anglican Church

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