Today I was walking down to the train station for a late start at work (after a 15 hour work day yesterday) and ruminating on the things that I can be sure of in life.
I recently saw this illustration by Mari Andrews of 'Things I Feel Unsure About' as opposed to 'Things I Feel Sure About'. If I had my own list it would look a little like this:
Things I Can Be Sure About:
-My hair looks best the day after I've washed it
-I'm a sucker for crunchy granola
-Skirts and dresses over Trousers and shirts
-I like shoes that make a slight click when heel meets ground (they give me confidence)
-That God so loved this world that He gave His only Son, so that anyone who believes in His Son Jesus Christ will not perish because of the sin that we all commit and that justly merits punishment, but will have eternal life with God because Jesus has paid the price for that sin in His death on the cross.
-That God is faithful:
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth.
-That I am so often unfaithful:
[My] love is like the morning mist,
like the early dew that disappears.
Things I Can't Be Sure About:
-Whether the combination of peanut butter and strawberries or tahini and maple syrup wins the sweet toast prize for after dinner snacking
-Whether I'm actually hungry or not
-What I really think about my bond
-If my choices of optional papers for third year are what I really want to do
-Whether I'll be able to do a Master's course next year
Thankfully, I thought, the last two things I am sure of are enough of an assurance to outweigh the uncertainty that I have about small or seemingly big things. Jacob showed me Chapter 6 of Hosea when we were skyping some time ago, and sometimes during the week I search it up on my laptop and read it again. He said something so true about it - that it really contrasts our 'constant inconsistency' with God's unending faithfulness (a surety).
I thought about another conversation we'd had, and how I'd come to see from that that perhaps love isn't closest to a feeling or a series of actions but faith. Love - faith, both sometimes appear to disappear but are actually constant in their true forms. Love - faith, both intangible, both life-giving, both relational, both holding onto the now and hoping for and dreaming about the not-yet.
Love - faith, both nothing without assurance and certainty in some for or another. If you love someone unreasonable, knowing they do not return your love and that you will never be in love together with them, then that love is pain and frustration and destruction. If you have faith in something you do not actually believe in, which proves false and fleeting and unfaithful, then that faith is dead and useless. And so it is an unchanging, constantly constant and sure God which I choose to love foremost and to put my faith in. His assurance is my life song, his constancy my rock, upon which I build my faith and trust in love.
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