Living With Confusion
Taking the next step without having every answer.
Have you ever gone over a situation again and again and still not understood it? Not a problem you can solve, but a fog. You cannot tell what is happening, why someone did what they did, or what to do next. Confusion is uncomfortable in a particular way. It makes you feel like everyone else got instructions you did not.
The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:29
These words come at the close of a covenant Moses set before Israel. The verse sorts everything into two piles. The secret things belong to God. The revealed things belong to us and to our children, so that we may do all the words of this law. Notice what it does not say. It never promises the first pile will shrink.
That is a strange kind of relief. Scripture never promises that enough prayer will answer every question. Some things stay God’s. But the verse does not leave you standing still either, because it ends with doing. You are not asked to act on what you cannot know. You are asked to act on what you already know, which is usually more than confusion lets you feel.
Today, draw a line down a sheet of paper. On the left write the questions you cannot answer. On the right, one thing you already know is right to do today. Do that one thing. Then pray over the left side: “Lord, this side is Yours.”
What I cannot know belongs to God. What I know is mine to do.
Deuteronomy 29:29