What questions are you asking yourself today?
What’s nagging at you as I you go through your daily routines?
Maybe some simple questions like:
- Did I move that load of laundry to the drier last night?
- Did my kids finish all their work due today?
- Did I check all the necessary boxes on my to do list?
Maybe ones with more depth as well like:
- Did I make the right decision?
- Did I say the right thing?
Or maybe even more challenging ones like:
- The world is suffering, what is mine to do?
- When I can’t physically do anything, are my prayers and my words of support enough?
I think there are more questions rolling through my head right now as a 41 year old adult than there ever were in any other stage of my life.
Simple ones.
Deeper ones.
Challenging ones.
But are they “the” questions I should be focusing on? Are they the ones that should be guiding my day?
Henri Nouwen says no.
Instead, he lists these as the real questions to be asking:
- Did I offer peace today?
- Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?
- Did I say words of healing?
- Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
- Did I forgive?
- Did I love?
In a way, all the other questions that plague us… all the other ones we stay awake at night contemplating can fall under the category of one of these simple questions offered by Nouwen.
He says that when life has too many questions, too many challenges… “[We] must trust that the little bit of love that [we] sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”
May we let the real questions guide us today so we may sow the seeds of the peaceful and loving world we hope to leave behind.
