Questions

I find that often times my mind is a whirlwind of questions. Wonderings of what could have been and what will be swirling through my brain. I know that I am not unique in my condition. As I have been working my way through "The Rock That is Higher" by Madeleine L'Engle she reminds me constantly that I am a finite being living in a story authored by an infinite God. So of course I will spend much time wrestling with not knowing.

As I have read, these words jumped off the page, "Life is full of questions, and we are free to ask them, to understand, occasionally, that we are not going to get an answer or at least not the answer we expect, and then we are called to move on. But I believe that God encourages us to ask questions." It is in the call to move on that I find the most difficulty. Instead I am a master of holding on and letting my questions pave the way to more questions. This can be so dangerous. I find that my questions pull me away from the here and now and cause me to live in the unchangeable past or the unknown future. I can't help but wonder what I have missed in my life because I was not fully present in that moment. There I go, asking another question.

L'Engle goes on later to say, "But whatever our experience is, God is there, in it with us, as God was in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That isn't really an answer, but it's all we're going to get, and it's enough." I love how frank Madeleine can be. There is one common theme that is present when I look at the Bible, the history of the world, and the history of my own life. God is there...authoring, ochestrating. When I don't know the answers it doesn't matter. I need only trust that God is there by my side, leading me to what comes next.

Rainer Maria Rilke says it like this, "...I want to beg you...to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to love the questions themselves.... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Could it be that there is more to be learned from the asking of a question than in the receiving of the answer?