Like many people, I woke up Wednesday morning with my heart pounding. I’d been up late watching election returns and I woke up at 5:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep. All I could do was look at the news and see if it could resolve some of this uncertainty for me.

Of course, it couldn’t. And I should have been able to predict that. It was, after all, a predictable uncertainty. Experts had been talking for weeks about how it might take a week or more to count all of the legitimate votes, depending on different states’ rules and all of that. And yet here I was, desperately looking for some kind of answer.

I was able to handle it, fortunately. I drank a cup of coffee and I went for a run and I came in here to church. I’ll probably end up going for another run later; we’ll see how the day goes!

But it made me think. We face all sorts of predictable uncertainties in the near future. I don’t know what Advent and Christmas will look like, exactly, but I do know they’ll look very different. I don’t know how it will go to have a toddler or a small child when the libraries and indoor play spaces are closed all winter and the playgrounds are frozen solid, but I can imagine. And I think there’s an opportunity here, to think—with this test case—about what we do in the face of predictable uncertainty, what we do when we know there’s anxiety coming, and how we cope with it.

Do we do it in a healthy way? Go for a run, drink a cup of coffee, put down the news and do something else? Do we cope in an unhealthy way, scrolling endlessly through the news, staying up late, waking up early, and much worse things?

I was reminded of our gospel reading for this coming Sunday. It’s right on the nose. Matthew tells Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids: five wise, five foolish. The wise fill their lamps with oil and wait up all night. The foolish wait up all night too, but they didn’t fill their lamps with oil. So when the bridegroom comes, the wise have light to see him—but the foolish don’t.

It makes me think. What are you doing to keep your oil full, to keep your lamp—as the old hymn goes—“trimmed and burning”? What are you doing to tend to yourself in this time of predictable uncertainties, of predictable unpredictability? How are you preparing now for the winter ahead? What are you storing up to make it through those cold, dark months? I don’t know what it is for you. I do know what it is for me—I learned that even more this week. I want to try to practice those things this fall as it becomes winter. I want to prepare myself for all the predictable uncertainties ahead. And I hope that this church can be part of that for you.