Think of a time when you felt uncertain. This Holy Week, as we follow Jesus into Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, we join the disciples in their uncertainty. As we head into the hardest parts of our Christian story, let’s be uncertain together.
Uncertainty is both natural and also a difficult challenge because there are no perfect answers, and that can cause pain and fear.
I remember my feelings of uncertainty during Holy Week 2020. We were physically isolated from one another. We felt fearful as Covid-19 numbers rose in our community and world. We took such care to not contract or spread the virus.
During Holy Week last year, we were planning for in-person outdoor worship in Clintonville. On Easter morning, two hundred Broad Streeters gathered at the Park of Roses. It was so cold we wore winter coats for the entire worship service…yet what joy and hope we felt in seeing one another!
At last – this year we’re able to offer in-person worship at church for Holy Week! Covid-19 numbers have dropped! Yet many of us wonder why don’t we feel better, why we continue to feel so uncertain. It’s a confusing time. The emotional and economic fallout from two pandemic-laden years still weighs more heavily than we might realize. We’re grieving with Ukraine, and the BA.2 variant looms on the horizon. These are uncertain days.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
As uncomfortable as it may be, find time to acknowledge and sit with something you’re uncertain about. Let your thoughts and feelings roll through you.
As we gather at the foot of the cross, trusting the day will come when we gather at the empty tomb, let’s face our uncertainty together.
What is one thing you do to help manage uncertainty?
-Written by Rev. Ann Palmerton
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