Faith Matters: Uncertainty Bears Possibility

By Perjah Delgado

“Faith Matters” is a column that features pieces written by local religious figures.

There are moments in grief when nothing anyone says feels like it fits. We often rush to comfort in these moments because we do not want others to remain in pain for too long. And yet, I have found that comfort is not always what I reach for first during moments of anxiety, in witnessing violence and suffering, or in proximity to loss.

Sometimes it is not even what I want.

I was asked to preach on the Sunday after Christmas. My congregation experienced several losses during the season before, and some of them were very personal to me. The grief that accompanies these losses often feels inconsolable and uncontainable. Yet, there I was, called to lead at such a time as this, among these beloved people of God, carrying my own grief while also having the honor of speaking into theirs.

The Gospel reading for that Sunday was Matthew 2:13-23, the continuation of the Christmas story we do not often speak about: fear, fleeing, violence, and Rachel weeping for her children.

The light of the world has come. And yet, the darkness persists.

As soon as the Magi left, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him to take Mary and the newborn baby Jesus and flee to Egypt, as their lives were in immediate danger. Herod was preparing to carry out violence against innocent children. Joseph was commanded to remain in Egypt with his family until he was told to return to Nazareth. He was called to hold the light where it needed to be, through uncertainty, fear, and violence.

The call to stay with the light in the darkness can feel hard to embrace when loss surrounds us. For some of us, the proclamation that the light of the world has come does not immediately feel comforting. Sometimes light feels less like reassurance and more like exposure. It can feel like a reminder of what has not been healed, what still aches, and what has been taken from us.

And I find myself wondering what it means to admit that honestly in spaces where faith is often expected to sound certain. Sometimes we feel pressure to appear fully believing, even while holding questions and tension. And yet, in practice, many of us live with the unspoken expectation that in order to belong, we must present ourselves as more resolved than we actually are. We must look and sound steady in order to remain in community, rather than be allowed to remain in community while carrying what is not fully settled within us.

The beautiful thing about scripture is that it gives us images and voices that refuse premature closure, not assuming that faith always looks settled or resolved.

Rachel, one of the matriarchs of Israel, is remembered in this moment as weeping for her
children. She refuses to be comforted because they are no more. Her grief is raw and
uncontainable.

She wails. She laments. It looks like anger at a world that has taken too much, too soon. And in her refusal to be comforted, she preserves the truth of what has been lost, unsoftened and unedited for the sake of ease. Yet, many of us are not accustomed to staying with this kind of unresolved grief, especially in community.

Perhaps what makes this difficult is the way many of us have learned to understand wholeness itself. We often assume that being whole means being settled, consistent, or emotionally coherent. That to be whole is to have everything resolved within us, to speak from a place of clarity that is no longer marked by fracture or uncertainty.

But grief does not wait for us to feel ready. The world continues moving, even when we are
trying to make sense of what we have lost. There is something disorienting about that mismatch, between what is happening around us and what is unfolding within us.

And I find myself wondering if wholeness might not be about resolution at all. Maybe wholeness is the willingness to bring every part of ourselves before God, as fragmented as they are, with hope that God can eventually put the pieces together. Because there are parts of us that grieve while other parts keep going. Parts of us that believe, and parts of us that are learning to believe again. And none of these parts cancel each other out.

They coexist. And perhaps it is God who holds what we cannot yet hold together.

I have come to understand this from personal experiences and in leadership. There are moments when the hard things do not pause for the work that is still required of us. When you are expected to stand, speak, and show up for others, even while you are still trying to understand the weight of what you are carrying yourself. The call does not wait for internal resolution. The world does not slow down until we are ready to reassemble ourselves.

Something I learned on the Sunday after Christmas is what it means to remain present in spaces where people are looking to you for steadiness, while also learning that steadiness does not always mean certainty. Sometimes, it simply means refusing to abandon the room. Refusing to leave people alone in what they are feeling just because you are also feeling it. And realizing that presence is the decision not to disappear in the face of hard things, trusting that even what is unresolved in us can still be held by God while we serve beloved people.

And I have also come to see this as part of what it means to be called to ministry. That call is not dependent on being finished. It is not reserved for fully assembled people. Ministry requires us to be honest about the fact that we are still becoming, still being held together by God’s grace, and honored to be entrusted with love, presence, and care for one another in the midst of it. I begin to wonder where we learn to trust that this is enough.

We follow Christ, who enters suffering fully. The One who heals while wounded, restoring life while still bearing marks of what has been endured, and pauses to weep for what has been lost. Although his wounds remained, they turned into a witness. And perhaps that is what makes Christ trustworthy in our fragmentation: that nothing in us has to be hidden or resolved before we are met by him. Emmanuel is God-with-us. Not God above us shouting instructions. Not God ahead of us demanding we hurry. But God with us. In the night. In the waiting. In the in-between.

And maybe what this opens in us is not always hope as certainty, but something more fragile and honest: possibility. The willingness to not close the story too quickly. The courage, even when hope feels far away, to consider that what feels final in us may not be the end of what God is doing.

Because there are seasons when we cannot yet name hope without forcing it. But we can remain open to possibilities. We can stay close enough to God that we do not have to decide the outcome of our own becoming.

There are moments in grief when nothing anyone says feels like it fits. Even there, we are given Emmanuel. And maybe that is enough.

Perjah Delgado is a young leader at Hamden Plains United Methodist Church and an undergraduate student at Southern Connecticut State University. She is passionate about accompanying youth and young adults on their faith journeys, cultivating communities of belonging and justice, and participating in God’s ongoing work of renewal.