Embrace Your Questions
A Reflection by Christine Jurisich
What do you do when your questions have no answers?
Or no good answers?
When no answers bring comfort?
What about when there is more than one answer, leaving you unsure which to believe?
Sit with Your Questions
Start by sitting with these questions. Let them linger. Give them space to breathe. Think of them as seeds being planted in your heart. Seed questions you are watering and feeding with time and prayer so they can grow into bigger questions. The kind of questions that will grow you.
The kind of questions that will grow you.
There are times when sitting with questions is hard. I can feel sad and lost in them. As I think about the victims of war, violence, and natural disasters around the world, my questions emerge with raw honesty. How can there be such suffering and evil in the world? Who is God? Where is God?
When I experience an unexpected kindness or see growth in myself or others, the questions are asked with a deep sense of gratitude. Letting my questions simmer feels humbling. How big and merciful is this God of love and forgiveness?
When I see the interconnectivity of every living plant and creature on earth, my questions are asked with awe and wonder. Watching my questions grow can feel energizing. Are there any limits to a creating God that continues to inspire me?
Watch Your Questions become Bold and Creative
When I talk about sitting with your questions, letting them simmer, and watching them grow, I am inviting you to place them in God’s hands. Asking God to hold your questions is one way to release anxiety, fear, and the need for quick solutions. Let the questions settle into your soul. Allow them to take root in a way that leads to deeper, wider, and fuller questions. Watch them dangle in the air until they become more creative, daring, and bolder questions.
How much of God’s self is being revealed through me?
Am I courageous enough to live into the answers?
How big, how merciful, how generous is God?
If I begin to confront these questions, what does that mean for me and my need to forgive; and reach out and serve others?
Find Your Container to Hold Your Questions
When my questions feel too big, confusing, or dark to handle, I find comfort in a sort of surrendering to the mystery of life and the mystery of Christian life. The “mystery” is my container that helps me trust God in the middle of the unknown. I have come to my own beliefs and narratives that serve as a container for my questions at this moment in my life. You may have—based on your thoughts, lived experience, and values—your own mantra or belief system to serve as the container for your questions. What do you know to be true no matter what? What is at the center of your faith? What one belief can you rely on in this one present moment? These are questions to help you create the container to hold your questions. Or they may be the beginning of your journey of questioning that eventually leads you to your container.
Place Your Questions with Jesus’ Questions
If I have left you feeling more confused, you may find comfort in a prayer practice of placing your questions in Jesus’s questions. In the Gospel of Mark, there are more than 100 questions. It is also a gospel that talks considerably about suffering. It was estimated to have been written between 65 and 69 CE to provide comfort and strength to those left in the aftermath of brutal and barbaric Christian persecutions and so I find it helpful for this moment in which we are seeing so many dark situations around the world. Pray with some of Jesus’s questions from the Gospel of Mark.
What do you want me to do for you? (10:36,51 )
Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? (4:40)
Who do you say I am? (8:29)
What were you arguing about on the way? (9:33)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (15:34)
Pray
Focus on one that resonates with one of your questions.
Let it sit alongside Jesus’ question.
Raise your hands up in surrender.
Hold the two together in prayer.
Inhale the mystery.
Exhale the need to find an answer.
Continue to breathe in and out.
You are Not Alone with Your Questions
Jesus’s deep, confronting questions cut to the heart of any question you could ever have about your life, your faith, and your God. Praying through your questions while picturing them in Jesus’s questions can put your story in the broader Christian story of suffering, death, and resurrection. You are not alone. You can walk this journey because Jesus has walked it. Jesus is walking it with you. Everything—including the greatest mysteries of life—is part of our Christian story.
Since this is a reflection encouraging questions, I will end with a question from the article, “Question Marks and Turning Points: Following the Gospel of Mark to Surprising Places,” by Kathryn Vitalis Hoffman and Mark Vitalis Hoffman, which inspired my writing this month.
“Could it be that we could recognize God as one who shepherds us with questions, leading us along with a question-mark-shaped shepherd's crook?”
May your journey of questions be a fruitful one.
Listen to this reflection on YouTube.
Share in a Sacred Circle
The second full week of the month, we offer three drop-in Sacred Circles on Zoom and two in person. It is a chance to share the monthly reflection in a safe and welcoming environment. You never have to share more than you want to share. Look for an invitation with the Zoom link on the Monday of the week’s sessions. Learn more here.
Share Right Here*
What is your experience with questions? Do you embrace them? Do you fear them? What do you think of questions after reading this reflection?
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