Years ago, my son was preparing for final exams. I interrupted his focus and asked, “How’s it going, Bud?”
“Fine. I guess,” he sighed in uncertainty. “The problem is I don’t know what I don’t know.”
Anyone who’s walked through college exam season knows the perplexing truth of his answer.
I couldn’t help drawing parallels to our lives that December. We walk through our days with a kind of blindness to what we’ll encounter. We prepare as best we can to make things go smoothly, and yet…
For some, not knowing what’s ahead steadies them. It’s as if a warm blanket of fog quiets their heart’s storms.
For others, not knowing is an anxious tremble — like walking alone through a dark forest in search of clarity— head down, ears alert for any sound, friend or foe, deliverance or destruction.
Then I imagined the faith of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as she learned of her child’s divine conception. Surely, she stood short-breathed in wonder, her heart reaching for any hint of guidance. Maybe she often fell to her knees, praying her way through what she couldn’t comprehend about her son — the great I Am. Perhaps she labored her whole life to reconcile her motherly purpose with His saving grace purpose. The labor pains that tightened her womb under a starry sky could never rival the excruciating pain that tightened her heart decades later at the foot of the cross.
Faith is a combination of knowing and not knowing — the communion of our unhallowed ground with holy ground. It’s calling on the sacred and believing it works miracles in a wounded world. It’s choosing each day to look for the sacred amid the profane.
“I don’t know what I don’t know.”
This simple truth begs an answer.
So, this Christmas, when life’s anxieties, struggles, and trials take hold, I will focus my ponderings:
- What humble offerings can I give to ease the pain of His people?
- What am I called to birth that might, in some small way, rock this world?
- What words am I meant to deliver?
- Who are You calling me to serve?
In the dark night of our uncertainties, God promises His holiness will pour over us—and the miracle of His birth still exists for our world today.
