Tag Archives: Uncertainty

Devotional, Holy Week Series, Lent, Series

ALTAR AUDIT, Part 20: The Altar of Resurrection (Easter Sunday)

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By Rev. Todd R. Lattig[i]

Read Mark 16:1–8

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“I will not die; instead, I will live to tell what the LORD has done.” (Psalm 118:17 NLT)

Altars reveal what we worship. Some are obvious—raised platforms of stone and flame. Others are quieter, constructed in systems, reputations, loyalties, and assumptions. Lent is a season of holy examination. It calls us to look closely at what we have built, what we defend, and what we trust. In this series, we conduct an audit—not of budgets or buildings, but of allegiances. Lent strips away every false altar until only Christ remains.

A large rectangular stone altar sits centered in a modern open-air structure, visibly cracked down the middle. The surface is bare, with no cloth or objects. In the distance, a muted city skyline rises under an overcast sky. The atmosphere is subdued, emphasizing fracture, exposure, and the instability of what once appeared solid.
Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Altar of Resurrection” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

It begins in the quiet aftermath of certainty. The stone has been set. The tomb has been sealed. The system has done its work, and everything appears exactly as it should be. Death has the final word—or so it seems.

Some women come to the tomb carrying spices, not expectation. They are not looking for resurrection, but preparing for burial. Even now, they are moving within the logic of what has already been decided.

And then everything breaks.

The stone is already rolled away. The body is not where it should be. A message is given—clear, direct, impossible to misunderstand. He is not here. He has been raised. And yet, the response is not triumph. It is fear.

They said nothing… because they were afraid.

This is where Mark ends. No appearances. No resolution. No restored certainty. Just an empty tomb, a message that disrupts everything, and witnesses who cannot yet bring themselves to speak.

Because resurrection does not arrive as comfort. It arrives as disruption.

It breaks the certainty that death had secured. It refuses the finality that systems had enforced. It does not fit within expectation, control, or explanation. It does not settle neatly into belief. It unsettles it.

The altar was set. The stone was sealed. And still… it did not hold.

This is the reversal of everything that came before. On Friday, violence was justified through process. On Saturday, certainty settled through silence. And on Sunday, both are undone—not through force, not through argument, but through something no system could anticipate or contain.

Life where death had been declared final. And yet, even here, the story does not resolve cleanly.

Because the first witnesses do not proclaim it. They do not run forward with clarity and conviction. They run in fear, carrying the weight of something they do not yet understand. The truth has been revealed, but it has not yet been integrated.

And if we are honest, we recognize this too.

We want resurrection to feel like certainty restored. We want clarity, assurance, and resolution. We want something we can name, explain, and hold onto without tension.

But that is not how Mark tells it.

Resurrection does not erase mystery. It deepens it. It does not give control back. It removes it. It does not answer every question. It creates new ones.

And it asks something of us.

Not immediate understanding. Not perfect belief. Not even certainty.

Presence.

Because the question Easter leaves us with is not simply whether Christ is risen. It is what we will do in response to a truth that disrupts everything we thought was final.

The women ran. They said nothing, because they were afraid. And the story does not tell us what happens next.

Which means the silence is not the end. It is the space where we are now standing.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Resurrection does not restore certainty—it disrupts it.

PRAYER
God, meet us in the places where resurrection unsettles more than it comforts. When we are faced with what we do not understand, give us courage to remain present. When fear holds our voice, stay with us in the silence. And when new life breaks through what we thought was final, lead us forward—not with certainty, but with trust. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional

God’s People, part 43: Samuel

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Read 1 Samuel 3

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“So as David stood there among his brothers, Samuel took the flask of olive oil he had brought and anointed David with the oil. And the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon David from that day on. Then Samuel returned to Ramah.” (1 Samuel 16:13 NLT)

When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.

bible-samuelPart 43: Samuel. Have you ever felt like you heard the voice of someone calling you? I have. I remember when I was a boy, my parents had my sister and I go to bed at the WAY TOO EARLY time of 8 p.m. during the school year. Okay, so I now realize my parents were more reasonable then I thought they were then; however, at the time, this was a BIG DEAL for me. Why did I have to go to bed so early? As you can probably tell, I have always been a night owl and still am to this day.

One time, my parents were watching a movie after were in bed. Well, I just wanted to watch it and I couldn’t fall asleep, so I suck to the stairs and laid down so I could peer at the TV screen through the railing at the top of the staircase. At some point, deeply entrenched in the movie, I heard the voice of what I thought to be one of my parents (I couldn’t really tell if it was mom or dad at the time, which is odd now that I think of it) saying, “Todd, go to bed.”

My heart froze in its place and I jumped up and ran to bed. The next day, I sheepishly walked up to my mother and confessed that I had indeed been watching the moving from the railing and that I was sorry for not staying in bed. She looked at me with the most puzzled look on her face. I then asked her if she had been the one who told me to go to bed. She shook her head horizontally, to tell me that she had not told me to go to bed and that she didn’t even know I was up there watching. Later, my dad stated that he had not known either. Yet, I had audibly heard that adult-like voice telling me to go to bed.

I’d imagine that Samuel, much like me, had his heart freeze when he heard the voice of God calling him to be a prophet. Three times he heard that voice and thought it was Eli, the high priest who had taken Samuel under his wing as an apprentice of sorts. Finally, Eli instructed Samuel to say, “Speak, your servant is listening,” as he realized it was God speaking to him.

Samuel, as the Bible informs us, became the next and the final judge of the Israelites. As he would find out, his call kept changing and evolving and Samuel often felt like he was on shaky ground. He served God and his people as faithfully as he could; however, as is often the pattern in the Bible, his children were not spitting images of him or his faithfulness. They, rather, became corrupt and the people did not trust them to be leaders.

This must have crushed Samuel, and he must have felt like an utter failure when he ended up having to give in to the demands of the people and anoint a person to become their king and sovereign, a person he could only hope would represent God rather than his own self-interests. And the fact that his first choice for king was a failure and a realization of his worst fears, certainly did not help. With that said, Samuel did what he felt he must despite all the uncertainty and his faithfulness to God led to the rise King David and the royal lineage that would trace itself all the way to the King of kings, Jesus Christ.

The challenge for us is to learn from Samuel’s persistence despite the uncertainty we face in day to day life. We are often uncertain of how things are going to turn out and we often find ourselves questioning why things are turning out as they do; however, if our hearts remain open to the guidance of God, we will never be led astray. Even when we do make wrong choices, God will still work in us and through us for the glory of God and the coming of the heavenly Kingdom. Have faith, be still and know that God is with you.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“In this quest to seek and find God in all things, there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be. If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good.” – Pope Francis I

PRAYER
Lord, help me deal with the uncertainty and, rather than resting assured in what I think I know, let me rest assured in my faith. Amen.