The Joy of Uncertainty?!

When I first heard this phrase, I was, well, I was skeptical. I attended a YBL Breakfast at Adtran this morning and Dr. Marvin Carroll of Tec-Masters, Inc spoke.


The more I thought about this phrase the more I realized that this needs to be a reflection of my own situation. Can I really have joy in my uncertainty. Uncertainty of money, job, health, even life? My mind tried to find some verse to back this phrase up. I quickly came to James. Consider it pure joy when you have trials he says. Have joy in uncertainty? Why? How can the fact that I don't know when the money will run out or when I will find a new career bring me joy? Faith.


I have to learn to have faith. My faith-life (as the Message refers to it) needs to be open. The doors to this secret compartment of my heart must be flung open. Not just open but taken off the hinges never to be closed again! I admit that on the outside I can seem cool and collected while inwardly I am a scrambled mess. A scrambled mess because of uncertainty and, what I perceive at the time, failure. I need to rejoice that my faith is being tested. I need to have joy that even though there are so many balls in the air that I can't juggle them all there is someone there to juggle them for me. Joy that I have a hope and a future. Joy that God knows my every need. Joy that I have not gone hungry in the past, although I could stand to skip a couple of meals, and I won't go hungry in the future. Joy that my life is a mosaic.

What happens today does not define Jon Stacy. What happens today does not define tomorrow because tomorrow has yet to happen. The events of today are mere a piece of the mosaic that is my life. Have you ever seen a mosaic? There is a museum in my hometown that has a huge mosaic on the entrance to it. Up close the mosaic looks jumbled. A big mess. Some pieces don't fit where they are placed. Some look all wrong. Yet when you back up and look at the big picture, they all come together to make a beautiful portrait. My problem is that I tend to have a very myopic, point-in-time view of my life.

Sometimes I can't see the forest through the trees. I lose sight of the fact that I am only 28 years old. I know that my days are numbered, and I pray that I have many, many left, but the point remains the same...I cannot change the past and I can't create the future. Tomorrow has yet to be written and I control my reaction to the events of today. And it is in that that I can have joy. The events of today do not define my life. They are just a piece of the mosaic that God is putting together. And this fact is one that I tend to forget.

I forget to pray for things that should be in my every prayer. When I was a manager I don't think I ever prayed for guidance on how to handle situations or that I would meet sales goals or that I would be successful. And really it is ridiculous to not do so. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but God has a pretty good track record of making the right decision on how to handle any and every situation. Looking back I was naive and thought I could do it on my own. I was the reason I was successful. But being successful is all relative. I was successful in terms of meeting sales goals. In the first full year of business I lead the store to over $1 million dollars in sales. It was a new store in a market where 2 competitors had split the market share and I took all the market share away from one of those competitors, so much market share that the owners shut it down. Business was booming and I was the one responsible for it. Ha, how naive of me to assume that I did this all on my own. That I was that good. Well, I thought that and looking back on those years, I realize just how segregated my life was. My spiritual life had no influence on my business life. I was good at one, as I described above, but was completely lacking in the other. And this is where I find myself now.

I must work on my spiritual life, because it is in it that I must find joy. I must find myself making my spiritual life...successful, if one could ever consider it successful.