The Apostle Paul knew something about living with uncertainty. His entire ministry took place in a time of political turmoil in the Roman Empire, during the turbulent reign of the violent and unpredictable Emperor Nero. Paul’s personal life was also thrown into chaos by events beyond his control. In his second letter to the Corinthians he enumerates some of these: shipwrecks, imprisonment, frequent beatings, and even stoning by his Jewish opponents. “Besides these external matters,” Paul writes, “I have the daily pressure of my anxiety about all the churches.”

Yet, in the same letter in which...