Do I Need Clarity?

I noticed something odd yesterday. I had picked up a couple followers of my blog since the last time I had checked. That's awfully nice of them, so I figured I at least owe it to them to actually write something on here every once in a while. Just to show I care.

I was listening to a song today by Chris Taylor called "I Don't Need to Know." I was hoping to be able to get it to play on my blog, but they don't have it on playlist.com. It's a pretty good song, though, and I especially like some of the lyrics in the chorus:

I don't need to know all the things that I know you know
Just the simple fact that you loved me before I was born
Every piece of me that I lose along the way
You pick them up and make me new
You make me new

I'm graduating from Ozark in a little under three months. I have been thinking about this fact on a more regular basis lately. Not so much because I want to, but because it keeps sneaking into my mind when I let my guard down. I would rather not think about the truth that very soon I'm supposed to be an adult and I have to have some idea about where I'm going from here. In these sorts of life-transitions, I think all of us want to have a lot of questions answered. We want to know what life is going to look like. Will I go to grad school or go get a job? Where in the country will I go? Will I live by myself or have a roommate? Will I go ahead and get cable TV or not? Will I have any money? Who will I marry? Will the nursing home I'll probably be living in by that time let me have the ceremony there, or will I have to do it somewhere else?

I have a lot of questions that I would really like answers to. Right now, the future looks so hazy, and that can be frightening. I try my best not to worry or to be anxious, but it's a lot easier to talk about that than actually doing it. If only God would drop his will for my life like a brick on my head, I would be able to breathe much easier. Uncertainty feels like a precarious position.

What Chris Taylor recognizes in his song, though, is that we don't need to know everything. God does know, and he's a good God, and we can trust that he'll work things out. It's like a child with his father. When you're a little kid, you don't need to know every detail about the future. You don't ask questions like "What will I be doing three years from now? What is the exact economic process that ensures that I have plenty of mac n' cheese to eat at dinner? How can I best invest my future assets so that I can retire comfortably?" No, instead, the child knows that his father has everything under control. It's not the child's responsibility to have it all figured out. Maybe that's partly what Jesus meant when he said his followers need to be like little children.

There is a story about a guy named John Kavanaugh who worked with Mother Teresa for a while as he tried to determine what to do with his future. When he met with Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him, and she asked what he wanted her to pray. He replied that he wanted her to pray that he have clarity. However, Mother Teresa refused to pray that he would have clarity. (She could be such a jerk sometimes.) Kavanaugh told her that she seemed to always have clarity, and that he simply wanted to have that same sort of clarity in his own life. Then Mother Teresa said, "I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."

I don't need to know everything. I would really like to know everything. But I don't need to. It's not my job to have the entire course of the universe spread in front of me like a flowchart. It's my job to follow Jesus. To wake up each day and see how I can best serve him before I go to bed again. I know that God loves me, and that's enough. He's got the rest under control.