The GPS said our turn was 1 mile ahead. My 15 year old son was driving down the highway, “Mom- isn’t it cool that you can see for a mile. I think I could run a mile easier if I could see the finish line the whole way.” I agreed. I think it is easier to endure when you can see how long you have left, thus the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. I believe it is because of the way we access our pace, provision, and strength to make it to the finish. When we see where we are headed there is a clear ‘finish line’ and a sense of closure and it may even all make sense- whether it is a literal race or a project or an emotional climb or battle of some kind - and even if it doesn’t all make sense, at least it will be over soon.
Unknown is hard. When you are running and you don’t know where you are going or when it will be over. When you don’t know what happens next, at all- ever, for months and months on end. Unknown is hard.
I have thought a lot about this part of ‘hard’ over the last year. Our most recent missional assignment has required a long, long walk into the unknown. Like Abraham, we were called to leave even though we didn’t know where we were going. What is it about ‘knowing’ that is so comforting? Why do we want it so much? What will knowing provide for us? What will knowing change?
We are a people who want to KNOW, and indeed we are the most informed people in history equipped with our own ‘news feed’ inside our pockets. It is strange. Knowing things is held up and valued in our culture although we can’t do much about a great deal of what we know, still we want to know. Like Eve. She wanted to know too. She chose to eat from the only forbidden tree in the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. She ate. Then she knew.
In learning how to endure the unknown I have had to surrender the lust to know. I have had to learn how to monitor my strength not based on a finish line, but by locking eyes with only ONE who knows where we are going. I have to see the unseen more than the fog around me, or the ‘black hole’ as I call it. That black hole of unknown has a gravitational pull and if I even glance at it I am sucked into it and spun mercilessly into despair. God always tells me to ignore the unknown, don’t even look at it. (Matt. 6:34)
I have had to say to my own children on dozens of occasions this year, with tears pouring from both of us, “I believe that God is leading us in his loving kindness. I believe he is good, and big, and that He loves us. Because of that belief, I ask you to press on with me through this ‘hard’ and ‘darkness’ and ‘loneliness’, because I believe that God is leading us to a good, big, and loving place.” When they are so tired and I am so tired and just want to stop. My faith in the God who knows enables me to pull my children to their feet and ask them to press on into the unknown. Teaching them to lock their eyes of faith onto the character of God.
That is how those who hope in the Lord can renew their strength to soar on wings like eagles, to run and not grow weary, and to walk and not grow faint (Isaiah 40:31). By surrendering our lust to know we are no longer locking our eyes on a finish line, but on a Friend.