The Power of Uncertainty

How good are you at dealing with uncertainty? I don’t know about you but I’m not always that good at it. I always want to know what is going to happen, to be able to plan. It is just how I am wired.

I know this because many years ago I answered an MBTI or Myers-Briggs questionnaire. The MBTI was created by an American psychologist called Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isobel Briggs-Meyer back in the 1940s.

Briggs was inspired to research personality type theory when she met Isabel’s future husband, Clarence Myers, who had a very different way of seeing the world. Intrigued, she start looking into different temperaments. She and her daugther believed that if people understood each other better, they’d work together better and there’d be less conflict; that the post-war world could be a better place.

During her research, she came across Psychological Types by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. She realised that that Jung's theories could help people understand to their's and other people’s psychological type and developed the MBTI assessment tool which is now widely used in workplaces across the globe.

The MBTI helps you to understand where you sit along a spectrum of different personality factors ad how you make decisions – and one part of the tool is particularly relevant to Advent as it indicates how well you deal with uncertainty.

At the one end of the spectrum are those people who are very happy not knowing what exactly the future may hold and when things are going to happen. These are people who actually enjoy uncertainty and very often don’t want to pin things preferring to see what emerges. At the other end of the spectrum are those who want to know exactly what the future is going to hold. These are life’s natural planners, who want to know exactly where they are heading and how they are going to get there.

Perhaps you already have an idea where you sit along the spectrum – I must admit I am a bit of a planner. And for people who tend towards being planners there are aspects of Advent that can be challenging.

Before his ascension, Jesus told the disciples that he would come again; that there will be a second Christ mass, when at the end of time as we know it, the Son of Man will come on clouds, every eye will see him and he will make all things new. Isaiah tells us that on this day Jesus will settle things fairly between nations. He will make things right between many peoples and we will turn our swords into shovels, and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no more fight nation and we will come together in unity in Christ.

It sounds so wonderful doesn’t it? It is the hope that we all have in Christ, the promise of the Kingdom to come; when earth will be restored to how God always intended it to be and tears will be no more. But there is one passage in the Bible about this promise that is rather surprising, because it says that not even Jesus himself knows when he will return. Matthew 24:36 records Jesus saying ‘But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’ It seems as if God decided to keep this one bit of information close to his chest so only he knows the mystery of when his full plan for mankind will unfold.

But doesn’t something this momentous sound like the kind of thing that we want to plan for? Jesus certainly thought so and the Bible provides quite a wake up call. John the Baptist, for example, warned that Jesus will come with a winnowing fork in his hand, and he will separate the wheat and the chaff, gathering the wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. And Matthew Chapter 25 records Jesus saying that when the Son of Man comes in his glory, all nations will be gathered before his throne and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will divide mankind into those who will be saved and those who won’t.

According to gospel of Matthew, the arrival of the Son of Man will take place in times like Noah’s. Before the great flood everyone was carrying on as usual, having a good time right up to the day Noah boarded the ark. They knew nothing—until the flood hit and swept everything away. And Matthew 24: 39-41 tell us,’ so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.’

It’s not a prospect I suspect many of us like thinking about. In fact the implications of the second coming are one of those inconvenient truths that many churches like to scoot around. And there is an increasing Universalist tendency to want to believe that every person on earth, if they are right in heart, will be taken into the Kingdom at the end of time.

But Jesus made it very clear that he is the way, the truth and the life and that that this way is narrow. And as result some ardent planners have taken their rather literal interpretation of this scripture s to extremes. America in particular seems to have produced a number of dangerous Doomsday cults with an obsession about the idea of the ‘rapture’ and preparing for being taken up at the end of time. And there have been many attempts over the centuries to try and pin down the date for when this will happen – some trying to crack what they call the Bible code – in the belief that the date when the second coming will take place is buried somewhere in Scripture. But all these misguided attempts rather miss the point.

God didn’t make known the date on which his son would return for good reason. He has given us amazing certainty to hold onto; his promise that if we are in Christ we are in him - that through the death and resurrection of his son we have attained eternal life. All we have to do is focus on and believe in him. Our sins are forgiven. But he hasn’t given us a deadline because he knows that if he did all too many of us would wait until the last minute.

There is power in uncertainty. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us watchful and alert. Jesus likens us to the owner of home, who needs to say awake to prevent a thief breaking into his house and steals what he owns. And the thief, of course, is the devil.

Some churches don’t like thinking about the devil. It all seems a bit too supernatural but the greatest trick the Devil ever played is convincing us that he doesn’t exist. He distracts us with the ways of the world. He leads us to believe that what’s really important is our preparations for our earthly life; getting as comfortable as possible in the here and now, making sure that we earn enough money, climb the career ladder, have a nice house and car, that we are happy here for our short span on earth.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking. And one day - when we are so busy getting on with our lives that we forgotten all about Jesus return- he will come again which is why he tells us ‘Prepare, be ready, because the son of man is coming at an unexpected hour’ (Matt: 24:44).

So how do we prepare ourselves for his coming? Whether we are planners or people who are comfortable with uncertainty, we all need to be truly awake and alert. We must make sure we aren’t living our lives on auto pilot but instead live in anticipation and expectation. There is a wonderful saying by the theologian Henri Nouwen who says that a waiting person is a patient person; they’re willing to sit out the situation in the hope that something will reveal itself there. It’s about living or lives in watchfulness.

At the moment we are waiting for Christmas. On Advent Sunday we light a candle to symbolize the beginning of this period of waiting for the first Christmas. The youngest among us are now waiting and watching out for Santa Claus to land his reindeer on roofs throughout the land. But those of us who are a bit older are hopefully waiting to celebrate again that amazing moment where God came into the world - when he became Emmanuel.

There’s much we can learn from this time of Advent. This is a profound time of waiting and wonder. But it is only a month out of the year and, once we have packed up the Christmas decorations, it is very easy to forget how we felt at this time. Our whole lives, however, should be times of waiting for the second coming of Christ. So I invite you to reflect on what you can take away from this time of waiting and preparation and bring into your everyday life, 365 days a year.

When I was a child, I had a beautiful Advent calendar that came out every year. There was no chocolate involved but behind each little door was an image from the nativity. In early December the doors revealed Mary on a donkey, then shepherds and angels and finally, on December 25th, the image of Jesus in a manger - God in human flesh. I loved that calendar and the feeling that every time I opened a door, Jesus was coming a little nearer.

So what if we took that sense of anticipation that comes as we count down the days of Christmas and brought it into every day of our life? What if we treated our Bible like an Advent calendar and began every day opening up God’s word, eager to see what we find there? What if we were to begin each day eager to see what he the living Christ who dwells in us will do in our lives today?

What if we were to live our lives like we do at Advent? Watching, waiting in awe and wonder for the second coming, when the Son of Man will come again in glory to be with us once again and to make all things new. Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.

Kate Nicholas’s best-selling memoir Sea Changed (shortlisted as Christian Biography of the Year 2017) and her latest book Sea Changed: A Companion Guide – Living a Transformed Life are available at Christian bookstores and online at eden.co.uk, kooroong.com and Amazon worldwide. Her recent TV series Living a Transformed Life can be viewed on demand on www.tbnuk.org or at www.katenicholas.co.uk.