What are you sure of? What is it that you know that you know that you know?
There is a saying that the only sure things are death and taxes. In fact, taxes are even surer than death as someone will have to file your last income tax statement for you even after you die.
Life raises the stakes on each of us from time to time taking away our certainties. The spread of the coronavirus throughout the world and our own country took away many of our life-long certainties.
You are certain that you have the whole job thing under control until coworkers start whispering news that the company might not make it through the end of the year. Or that Artificial Intelligence is now doing your job. Goodbye!!
You are certain you’ve raised your kids well until the phone rings and it’s the police.
You are certain that your husband still has eyes only for you until he starts coming home later and seems distant in a way you can’t quite put your finger on.
You are certain that life is under control until a routine examination finds a lump and your doctor wants to schedule a biopsy.
Uncertainty has a way of creeping in on each one of us. Just when everything seems to be under control and life is working out right, a pandemic comes along and wrecks it all, leaving you to wonder what went wrong.
What happened to that sense of control that you had? What happened to that feeling that something was certain?
Thanks to Frank Logue for a few of these ideas.
Think of a recent time when YOU thought you were in control, and you discovered that you were not in control.
YOU ARE NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT, YOU ARE GOD-DEPENDENT!
My Commentary:
This reflection gently dismantles one of our deepest illusions — the illusion of control. We move through life constructing a sense of certainty: our work is stable, our relationships are secure, our health is predictable. We build these quiet assurances not out of arrogance, but out of a human need to feel grounded. Yet life, in its own time, unsettles them all.
What we discover, often painfully, is that what we thought we “knew for sure” was never as solid as we imagined. Circumstances shift. News arrives. A diagnosis is spoken. A relationship changes. And suddenly, the ground beneath us feels less like rock and more like sand.
But this is not only a loss — it is also an invitation.
From a Christian perspective, certainty was never meant to rest in circumstances. It was meant to rest in God. Everything else — health, success, relationships, even tomorrow itself — is subject to change. But God is not. The Scriptures remind us: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”That is the deeper certainty beneath all shifting things.
Perhaps the real question is not “What am I sure of?” but “In whom do I place my certainty?” When our confidence is rooted only in what we can see and manage, it will inevitably be shaken. But when it is rooted in God’s presence, His faithfulness, and His love, then even in the midst of uncertainty, we are not undone.
Life may take away many things we thought were guaranteed. But it can also lead us to the one thing that truly is.
I am getting great feedback on my new book: WHAT MAKES AMERICA AMERICA. I have 62 short Chapters that look at every aspect of life in America, from the Supreme Court to our National Parks. Here is the link https://a.co/d/00Lyqe1C that will connect you with my Amazon page. Click READ SAMPLE and you can read the First Two Chapters of the book for FREE.
