Have you ever come upon an abandoned old house and wonder what stories it might tell? I do that with trees, too. Then I go on and give them a new life. I’ve used stumps and parts of fallen trees for planters, seating, and stepping stones. A dead pine tree was even used as a trellis for cucumbers.

Maybe it’s my hoarding tendencies; but whenever I find tree pieces, I think of uses for them. Lacking the creativity that I admire in others, I’m often stumped. Consequently, I might have tree limbs, chunks of trunks, and old stumps hanging around my yard at any time.

While I love to imagine and ponder the past life of a tree that has left its remains, I also delight in visualizing the future possibilities of the repurposed wood.

So often I am similarly stumped as I consider my own repurposed life. The past is so different from what is to come. What happens when we ask God for direction? How does he answer? How will we know when he does?

If you were hoping I would explain that, I am sorry to disappoint.

The scriptures tell us to ask for wisdom and he will give it (James 1:5). It does not explain how it is given, nor whether we will get any sign that the path that we choose is the best one. We ask for wisdom and guidance, but often what we really want is a detailed road map!

This frankly confuses and frustrates me. Sure, I fully believe God gives wisdom to those who ask. The hard part is being sure I’m using wisdom in my own decisions!

We see Job agonizing about how to understand God, and King David wrote many questioning psalms about the nature of God and our choices as we follow him.

Choosing our steps in difficult times can feel like such a heavy responsibility that many are crushed emotionally by the burden. There is no beam of light or swelling music playing when we choose well, as there is in the movies! We are, in fact, left alone to doubt our actions, and Satan then has an inroad to feed a festering indecisiveness. He prods us with an urge to run away from trials rather than face them squarely with God’s help.

What if the very act of asking for wisdom helps us to summon the presence of mind to make good decisions? What if God gives wisdom to those who are mature by having given us time to make so many mistakes that they are already used up? There is simply less foolish stuff to do, because we have learned better by having done those things already.

While we may lack understanding of how God works when we are confused or uncertain about big decisions, we do know that this is one area where faith is a factor. James 1:6 carries the thought further; “But let him ask in faith, without any doubting” (NASB). It’s possible that the “doubting” also refers to the over-thinking that so often happens afterwards.

Sometimes we may be able to know the history of the tree that left a majestic stump. We may have watched its growth and demise, or we can guess its age by the rings it leaves behind. But we always know from history that God takes care of his people. That is the basis for our knowledge that God gives us wisdom with tough decisions.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future.

–by Christine Berglund @ www.forthright.net