What answers are you seeking right now?
What did you demand God tell you before your feet hit the floor and your day began?
Maybe something like:
- Tell me what’s going to happen to me today, Lord.
or
- Tell me how that problem is going to resolve.
or
- Tell me why already!!
or
- Tell me… is this all going to work out in the end?
Am I the only one who demands such answers from God?
I guess I prefer to be as frank as I can… even if, in the end, none of the answers I seek come in the clear and direct way I asked for them.
I hope God doesn’t mind. Though I assume God already knows the demands of my heart even if I chose not to voice them directly.
What answers do you want right now?
What answers is your heart longing for?
What if you never get them?
Will the story be enough?
I love this line by Mary Oliver:
“There are so many stories,
more beautiful than answers.”
This morning, as I finished illustrating this line, I couldn’t remember the rest of the poem it came from. So, I searched a bit til I found the full poem.
I was struck by the lines that came right before:
“So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.
An owl cried in the distance,
I thought of Jesus, how he
crouched in the dark for two nights,
then floated back above the horizon.
There are so many stories,
more beautiful than answers.”
Some things will always be mystery, won’t they?
Beautiful, awe-inspiring mystery.
The kind of mystery that makes demands of us to have a little faith…. To have a lot of faith.
What would it look like if, as we move through this Lenten season, we focus a bit more on the stories unfolding all around us than the concrete answers?
How much more beautiful could our lives become?
