Chaplain's Corner

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” These were the words of Corrie Ten Boom a Dutch Christian who with her family hid many Jews from the Nazis during WW2 and was ultimately arrested and spent time in a concentration camps until the camp was liberated at the end of the war.

She spoke not theoretically, but from the depths of personal experience. We all have significant experience with the unknown and every one of us has an unknown future. This is a daily reality that I deal with as a chaplain. A patient comes into emergency with abdominal pain, is admitted to the hospital for further tests and two days later is approached by the doctor with the news, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we have found colon cancer.” A simple pain in the stomach and two days later a person is faced with colon cancer – we just never know.

A family is driving home after church and on the way a car suddenly crosses the center line and a father is killed and mother seriously injured. The children come out of it with bruises but no serious injuries. A family’s life is changed forever, who knew? What’s going to happen now? Will mom recover? Who will take care of the kids? What about income, the father was the sole provider? A casual drive home from church and suddenly a family is thrown into the abyss of the unknown.

An older gentleman is admitted to the hospital. “Failure to cope” a diagnosis used to describe a person’s inability to manage independently at home. He’s confused, sometimes even belligerent, “I’ve taken care of myself for the last 85 years, who are you to tell me I can’t do it anymore?” Dementia is diagnosed and this gentleman is thrown into the dark cavern of the unknown.

Every day, we encounter problems, challenges, and situations that we struggle to know how to respond. When I was 24, I had an answer for everything (I was also young, naïve and foolish). At 64 I encounter many things that leave me scratching my head. Not because I have grown dull of mind and befuddled, but because life just isn’t simple – it never was – it was only my youthful imagination that thought so.

“I don’t know” is becoming a more common reality in my life. The questions people pose to me and the problems they confront many times don’t have clear answers. “I don’t know” scares me, allows a sense of inadequacy and impotence to creep over me, but integrity will no longer allow me to fake it. I cannot pretend to have solutions. Waiting, wondering, confusion, feeling abandoned are all realities that sooner or later we find ourselves surrounded by because frankly, there are so many things we just don’t know.

This is one of the places where my faith in God connects with reality. I’ve become comfortable with the prayer, “Father, I don’t know, please help me find the way.” Or “Father, I want to help, but I have no wisdom to offer, please reveal your direction for this situation.” Trusting God, who knows everything perfectly, isn’t any longer my choice of last resort but my first choice. Faith is an attitude that is willing to completely trust God even when we are totally clueless.

When I was younger I often “instructed” God in my prayers, suggesting to him the appropriate course of action and asking him to move in that direction. How arrogant! These days, I come as a clueless child to my Father in Heaven who needs no direction or instruction and simply throw myself upon him, trusting that he will guide me through the unknown safely. I have found this hard learned humility to be quite liberating. How about you?