I Hate Not Knowing
In general, I hate not knowing, but especially when I have to leave from a place without knowing exactly where I’m heading.
I hate leaving work when a patient is going downhill, not knowing if interventions were timely enough and what the outcome will be.
I hate leaving without explicit directions to my destination, I’m a little challenged as it is when it comes to navigation.
I hate leaving a conversation and not knowing the trajectory from there.
What's Next
Surely you’ve had those moments too.
Sitting in the passenger’s seat of the car, it’s not the breakup conversation but you get out and you have no idea what your next conversation will hold. You leave without knowing whether, the next time you see each other, you’ll work thinks out or call it quits.
Maybe it was the moment you cranked the ignition and drove off your college campus for the last time, trunk full of your last four years of memories and dorm furniture, back home to your parent’s house and your childhood bedroom, not knowing what you would do next.
Maybe it was the moment you turned in your badge and handed over the keys and walked out of your office, knowing that leaving was what you needed to do, but now knowing what the next chapter would hold.
When Asked To Leave
In reading through the Genesis account of Abraham’s life, that seems to be what God was continually asking him to do; leave without knowing.
First, Abraham was asked to go forth from his homeland, to be a wanderer, at seventy-five years old.
God didn’t tell him where he was going, he just asked him to leave.
Twenty years down the road, in similar fashion, God ask Abraham to take his only son Isaac to Mount Moriah where they would build an altar and make a sacrifice, the sacrifice being Isaac.
Knowing his God to be kind and gracious, who had given Isaac as the promised descendant, who would make Israel a great nation after their years of being childless, surely God wasn’t serious.
Nonetheless, Abraham left for Mount Moriah, with his son, not knowing.
Scary & Necessary Steps
There are few things as petrifying in life as not knowing.
There are so many terrifying realities that the unknown encompasses.
Although they may present themselves in seemingly insignificant ways, the biggest steps of faith we take are often the ones we take without knowing anything that will lie beyond the point in which we stand at that moment in time.
When we pack up, turn in our badge, close the door and leave while not knowing where we are heading next, that is faith.
It’s scary, anxiety producing, and difficult. It feels like holding your breath while hoping against hope.
But some of the most necessary steps we take in life are leaving ones