Joel 2:13-14

Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows? He [perhaps] may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing—grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God. (Joel 2:13-14).

 Perhaps. It is a word that evokes fear from the certain-and-want-to-know-and-plan-ahead part of me.

Perhaps is a word that describes our world of whirl and wish and wash away. The ambiguity of perhaps wields weight in our lives, dictating and changing plans. It can heavily hang with a hint of uncertainty behind the best laid plans of mice and men. Perhaps reminds me of how precious little I have control—something I rather like far too much. It is something I have been trying to surrender to the Lord.

Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:14-15)

Satan tries to capitalize on the perhaps, adding to the weight. Sinuous whispers sift into the unconscious, slipping in mistrust and fear. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps yes. Perhaps not. Fear –control—an attempt for certainty in an unstable life, but can never grasp.

Perhaps found its way into Joel’s urging. The Hebrew word leaves little space for absolute assurance—Perhaps the Lord may turn and have pity and bless us. Perhaps he will relent.

Perhaps. Perhaps with eternity and with the welfare of the nation at stake.

Their hope and trust was based on God’s character. Today, hundreds of years later, the perhaps is sure. Sure in Christ. It is finished, he cried.

Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. (2 Cor. 3:4)

 In him [Jesus] and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. (Eph. 3:12)

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus.. (Heb. 10:19)

…the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world… (Rev. 13:8)

Confidence in him. And the perhaps and the fears subside, soothed by the assurance of grace in Him and the whisper-gentle of his presence. Someone (perhaps Martyn Lloyd-Jones?) said that we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. It is true. And confidence builds on him and his character and his finished work. There is a greater reality than perhaps in this topsy-turvy terrain and travails.