Embracing the Uncertain, 2nd edition: A Bible Study for Unsteady Times

By Magrey deVega

Learn to navigate life’s uncertainties.

Just turning on the news lets us know we are living in uncertain times. Economic instabilities, eruptions of violence, and natural catastrophes can alter the lives and landscapes of entire communities. Our individual lives are often just as unsteady: relationships can falter, plans can go awry, and confidence can wane.

Uncertainty can be uncomfortable. Many of us prefer stability and a predictable future to an unknown fate. We are wired to want to control our destiny.

The reality is that in our fast-changing, unpredictable world, there are few guarantees in life. It’s those who are willing to embrace uncertainty and make the risky decision to follow Jesus despite the many unknowns who will reap the greatest rewards.

In Embracing the Uncertain, Magrey deVega invites readers to engage and wrestle with life’s uncertainties, not ignore them. The six chapters focus on six post-transfiguration, pre-Passion stories in the Gospels. Each of these stories is a signpost in the Gospel narrative, pointing down at a world filled with uncertainty but pointing us forward to a cross that can show us how to follow Jesus with courage, hope, and obedience.

Embracing the Uncertain helps you dig deep into your faith and face life’s challenges with a renewed sense of purpose.

In addition to the book, other study components include a Leader Guide and DVD.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Oct 7, 2025
• ISBN: 9781791040901

Magrey deVega

Magrey R. deVega is the Senior Pastor at Hyde Park United Methodist Church in Tampa, Florida. He is the author of over a dozen books, including Questions Jesus Asked, The Christmas Letters, The Bible Year, Savior, Hope for Hard Times, Almost Christmas, and One Faithful Promise. He is also a contributor to numerous publications on preaching, worship design, and the spiritual life. He is the proud father of two daughters, Grace and Madelyn.

Book preview

Introduction

When times are unsteady, we experience one of life’s profound contradictions: in order to remain steady, we have to keep moving forward. And in order to move forward, we have to maintain our balance. It’s the kind of reciprocal, counterintuitive reality we learned when we first rode a bicycle. Movement helps to provide stability. We discovered the same truth when we learned how to drive: the higher the speed required the more gradual course corrections. To change your trajectory for later, you have to slow down sooner.

Your life may be filled with all kinds of unsteadiness right now. Some of them are easy to identify and explain, making it more possible to find help and solidarity with others. Some of your struggles are deeper, more existential, in which you are having a harder time defining for yourself what is happening in and around you, making it tougher to share with others. And some difficulties are just the opposite: they are so widely experienced throughout the human community that the problem isn’t in verbalizing the problems; it’s in the widespread fear that no one has the solutions.

Like tectonic plates and shifting sands, your footing may feel less stable, less reliable, than it has ever been.

So, we live a contradiction. To find stability, we must maintain mobility. Keep moving forward in order to stay centered.

In other words, we have to embrace the uncertain.

That is exactly what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration, the precise midpoint of the Gospel story, at least in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (John places the story much earlier, devoting even more of his Gospel to what happens afterward.) Up until then, the story of Jesus was one of constant amazement and growing popularity. Crowds were growing, his reputation was rising, and his followers were witnessing one astonishing miracle after another.

In short, everything—everything—seemed to be going well.

In the Transfiguration, the disciples literally experienced a mountaintop moment. In the chapter prior, Jesus had just asked them the most important question in our spiritual journey (Who do you say that I am?) and Peter had gotten it exactly right. (You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.) Then, on that mountain, they saw Jesus in all his blazing glory, accompanied by the heroes of their ancestry on either side.

What followed was the proverbial icing on the cake: the voice of God, booming from a bright cloud, the first and only time the disciples would have heard God speaking (unless they happened to overhear Jesus’s baptism):

This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!

Now, if we were reading this story for the first time, with no sense of what was to follow, we would have expected the Gospel to end right here. On a high note. In a moment when everything fit together, all was well, and life was good. No wonder Peter and the disciples said, Lord, it is good for us to be here. They wanted to stay. Forever. And who could blame them? This was as good as it could get.

But that’s not the Gospel. And that is certainly not life.

Mountaintops often mean subsequent valleys. Highs precede lows. Certainty gives way to uncertainty.

That’s why Jesus responds to the disciples the way he does. Let’s stay! they say. No, Jesus replies. We are not staying. We are heading down the mountain, back to the villages and towns and the people below.

So, the disciples then must have thought, Well, then great! Let’s roll! Let’s tell everyone we see down there of the amazing thing we just saw! The crowds will get even bigger, and your popularity will soar even higher! But again, Jesus says no. We are not doing that either.

Instead, he tells them they are not simply staying; and they are not pushing the gas pedal either. Rather, their job was to watch and wait:

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, ‘Don’t tell anybody about the vision until the Human One is raised from the dead’ (Matthew 17:9).

In other words, he told the disciples to embrace all the uncertainty to come.

Because Jesus knew what was coming. The second half of the Gospel story is in direct contrast to the first. It is full of mystery, instability, even treachery. Regardless of which Gospel, every story between the Transfiguration to Easter is literally downhill, descending the mountain, into a valley of desperation and uncertainty that would only conclude with an ascent to Golgotha.

To be honest, I’ve never fully known what to do with the idiom downhill. To say things are going downhill means things are getting worse. But downhill is still a lot better than uphill, in terms of ease and comfort. So, again, it’s a paradox. Every moment, high or low, requires both vigilance and momentum, both balance and propulsion. Especially when times are unsteady.

And goodness, take a look at all the uncertainty that would greet Jesus and the disciples after the Transfiguration. Just the six chapters of this study alone cover a wide spectrum of challenges you and I face, even right now:

Look at the desperate father who came to Jesus for more than the healing of his son. His words, I have faith; help my lack of faith! come from a man who is not sure how to have faith when his world and his mind are swimming with doubts (Mark 9:14-29).

Look at Peter, who was pondering the frailty of human relationships and wrestling with how to forgive someone who had wronged him (Matthew 18:21-22).

Look at the anonymous voice from the crowd, whose dispute with his brother over an inheritance prompted Jesus to teach them about how to find security in a future filled with worry (Luke 12:13-34).

Look at Mary and Martha, grieving over the death of their brother Lazarus, angry at Jesus for his supposed indifference, and staring squarely at the reality of their finite human existence (John 11:1-44).

Look at Zacchaeus, the tax collector who made a career out of cheating people, coming to the blessed realization that his corrupt ways did not constitute the most holy life (Luke 19:1-10).

And look at Jesus, whose blood-stained prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane was a struggle to discern the mystery and complexity of God’s will (Matthew 26:36-46).

Throughout this book, you will encounter several post-Transfiguration, pre-Easter stories from the Gospels. You will discover that each of these passages is a signpost in the Gospel narrative, both pointing down at a world filled with uncertainty and pointing us forward to a cross that can show us how to follow Jesus with courage, hope, and obedience.

Ultimately, that is how the story of Jesus shows us how to deal with uncertainty. Not by crouching in a corner and passively expecting it to blow over. And not by steamrolling through it, expecting to overcome it by sheer will. But to embrace the paradox that Jesus modeled through his life and witness:

Stay centered, and keep going. Move deliberately, and with focus and vigilance, so that you stay in lockstep with the movement of the Spirit. Keep your eyes open, and your feet in motion; do not rush ahead of God, and do not lag behind. Embrace the uncertain for all the beautiful complexity it gives you. For in it