A couple of weeks ago I was driving down the road, listening to the radio, as I often do. One particular radio station I frequently listen to was having "Psychic Thursday."
Essentially, they had a psychic in the studio and you could call in and ask her questions without having to pay the ridiculous $5/minute fee or whatever nonsense they charge nowadays. I continued to listen as a few people called in and got the advice of the psychic on whatever questions they had asked.
As I drove and listened, I felt this twinge. This small part of me that almost seemed to whisper Call in. It can't hurt. It could only do you good.
And then I stopped. And the Holy Spirit smacked me in the face.
I'm a person who likes to know what's going on. It's not so much that I'm a gossip or whatever, I just like to know things. It sort of makes me feel...I don't know...empowered. I like to know things and that has often been perpetuated by the fact that, for one reason or another, a lot of people come to me for advice or to just spill their guts to. I don't know why, it's just always happened.
I also happen to be a control freak. I'm fairly OCD, super organized, and very type A. I plan things out to a T and try to do my best to not freak out when things don't go as planned (though I don't always do a very good job).
So a combination of a person who likes to know things and a control freak means that when I don't know what's going to happen and therefore can't control it...well, that's hard.
And that was the draw.
Theoretically, I could call this person and she could tell me things about my future. She could tell me if I was going to find a new job soon. She could tell me if I was going to be a writer one day. She could tell me if things were going to work out with Office Boy. She could tell me if things weren't going to work out with Office Boy.
But when I took that second to stop and think, I realized just how sinful my thoughts and desires were.
A huge part of the Christian life is accepting the unknown. It's accepting that you can't always know things. It's accepting that you often can't know things.
As I reflected more, I realized the allure of knowing the unknown.
It's common in this culture to want to know what's going to happen. To want to know things so you can plan for "the future." But along with an allure, there is also a danger in knowing the unknown.
I think back to the story of Abraham and Sarah.
God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would one day have a son and his descendants would be too numerous to count. He promised them this and God never breaks His promises. But Sarah heard those words, that promise, and took it and ran with it. She got impatient. She sent her handmaid, Hagar, to her husband to conceive a son to be the heir that God has promised. She forget that God doesn't work on our time. He works on His time and His time only.
That one decision -- that came from knowing the generally unknown -- is something that continues to have repercussions even today because Hagar's son, Ishmael, was the father of the Arab nation.
In similar fashion to her mother-in-law, Rebecca, the wife of Isaac, took the knowledge of the unknown -- that the older of her twins would serve the younger -- and ran with it. She jumped the gun to make sure that the older would serve the younger, to ensure that Jacob would get the inheritance she felt he deserved. In the end, God works things out because He always does, but it caused years of pain and hardship and dissension between the brothers.
And I continued to think of how I would respond if I knew the unknown. What if I knew I was in store for a new job? I would continue to be supremely frustrated in my current position. What if I knew that I would one day be a published author? I would be impatient and irritated that I couldn't be a published author now. What if things weren't going to work out with Office Boy? And what if they were? If they weren't, I would be inclined to just break things off immediately, because what's the point in wasting time on a relationship that isn't meant to be? But if that was the case, I could miss out on learning some amazing things through the relationship, even if it wasn't forever. And if it was going to work out with Office Boy, I would want to know why we had to wait.
In the end, I realized that for the control freak, OCD, type A person I am, nothing good would come from knowing the unknown.
I may get frustrated and impatient because I want to know what's going to happen sometimes, but in the end I know that God is in control of my future and He has it all planned out for me already. He holds me in His hands and things will go about according to His plan because He is sovereign and He is God. And though that may be hard for me to remember sometimes and I might have my impatient and frustrated days, I know that ultimately I will end up right where God wants me to be.
I'm still in the middle of my story. I don't need to know the end before I get there.
