¨Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.¨ *
By Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet
One of the most difficult things to surrender this year has been the desire to understand. Trying to understand the whats and whys and how longs of this journey was occupying a lot of my thoughts & energy. I was obsessing over it. I finally had to make peace with that because one day I realized that no matter how God-given our desire to understand might be, we are not God (surprise) and are therefore limited in our understanding.
I don´t know if I´m slower than you or not but it took me a while to get that I can´t possibly comprehend the infinite. I know, dumb, right? But I subconsciously kept striving & yearning to understand our life & situation...until I had a wake-up call while reading the truth of Isaiah 55:9: ¨For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways...as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.¨
It turns out His thoughts and plans are not just a little bit different or higher than mine - they are more abysmally different than the heavens from the earth! This means I have a choice: trust in His plan without knowing what it is, how long it will last or what it´s purposes are - or not believe in God. I can´t believe in a God who has infinite power but no kindness. Nor can I believe in a God who is all kindness but has no power. How could that be God? But I do choose to believe in a powerful God of kindness.
I love this idea of living the questions. So many times we don´t live until we find the answers. But sometimes the answer is way over our heads or we´re not ready for it (but don´t know it) or we can´t bear it. But life is so full of questions. If we are continually waiting for answers we will never live! Living questions means having to live trusting in Him. Trusting in His wisdom, His timing, His plans, His demonstrations of love, His decisions on whether and when to give answers. Can I live in peace with that? If I can, I can live the questions.
There are many questions in my life right now. But I think I am just a little bit closer to living in peace with them instead of fighting against them. Just a little bit closer to living with them instead of waiting impatiently for them. I think I am just a bit closer to living...to living the questions. And I pray that someday I will just live right on into the answers...
*Thank you, Kati, for this quote that has been so helpful.
Thank you, Pam. There are many questions to be lived. Many answers that help so many parts of life -- and yet do not directly address some of our hardest questions. And so it comes back to this walk of Thankfulness and Light for the known answers and Thankfulness and Faith for the unknown. My family is in the midst of another wave of pain and questions right now, even as some parts of life gain hope and health, other disappointments and the long slow hurt of Sue's illness weigh heavy.
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