Uncertainty

This morning I am thinking about how we live into an uncertain future. The truth is we never know what tomorrow has in store. But in more “normal” times our expectations are more or less met, more often than not. In my family, you graduate high school, go you to college, you get a job and move out of the house, etc. It is no longer self-evident that this trajectory will hold.

For me, living into the uncertainty of the moment fills me with wonder and curiosity. I love where I live, I am certain I am called to be with my church community, even as it changes in this era, we have enough money and resources and love.

For my daughters, though, the future may seem like a big dark hole into which all expectation and plans for the future have disappeared. What do you do when online learning doesn’t cut it? When your summer plans have been cancelled and you are faced with long weeks ahead and no energy to figure out how to fill them? How do you look for a job across the country in the midst of a pandemic? How do you maintain friendships and community when we’re all sheltering in place? The shape of the future, once easily imagined, is amorphous now.

In today’s daily office readings we hear about the Israelites in the desert. “The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.” Forty years they wandered, not knowing how long it would be, not knowing whether they would ever make it to a place they had never been but had been promised was to be home. And God fed them with manna, bread from heaven.

I don’t have easy words of comfort for my daughters as they learn to live in uncertainty and find their paths. All I can tell them that God is with them through it all. I can listen to their pain and grief and questions, and I can offer them rest and food for their journeys, whatever shape they may take.

I took this picture yesterday. I was surprised by the brightness of this one plant on the grassy dunes. I hope that we can all be looking around for bright spots as we walk this uncertain path together. We don’t know where it is leading and how long we will be waking in this wilderness. May we let ourselves appreciate the beauty we find, even if it is not what we were hoping for or expecting.