Questions for God
When life leaves you with more questions than answers
Questions for God
Every evening, he opened the same brown notebook.
The title on the cover read: Questions for God.
He would place another one of his questions before God.
Some questions were small and simple.
But most questions were much bigger.
Questions like:
Why did my child die?
Why did my wife leave me for my best friend?
They were questions he never found a satisfying answer for. After all, his child’s shoes still stood by the door, keeping the pain fresh. And he still bumped into his wife and his “friend” at the worst possible moments.
Every encounter tore the wound open again.
Questions, fears, doubts… they all came upon him at the close of day.
Relentlessly they haunted him.
Writing them down gave him the illusion of control. But real answers? No, he never found them.
Most nights he tried to answer the questions himself, just so he could sleep. After all, getting answers from God was a bit out of his league. He wasn’t very spiritual and God wouldn’t really be interested in him on a personal level. So he invented logical answers, borrowed explanations from books, or repeated the wise sayings of television experts. Such things gave him a sense of peace that all things somehow made sense, even though they didn’t. But if he was entirely honest, deep inside, he did not believe any of it.
Anxiety became his master.
Life felt like clinging to driftwood in a raging river; knowing, a waterfall waited somewhere ahead.
Questions for God…
Why? How?
When?
And so it happened that one night, after a particularly harrowing day he grabbed his little book and stared at it with tears in his eyes.
Come to think of it, he hated that book.
How long had he been filling it for?
Years?
A decade?
And then that title… That was wrong too.
Sure, they were his questions for God, but a more appropriate title would be ‘Doubts I harbor,’ or ‘My inability to be a happy man.’
Regardless, he needed to continue to write.
Today someone had asked him, “You still believe in God after everything that happened to you? Come on… Wake up!”
He had not been able to answer.
Of course he had not.
And now he needed to write it down in his book.
He opened it to the page where he last had been and he froze.
The book was full.
There was no more empty space to write on.
No more room for more questions for God.
But the questions were not finished.
An oppressive feeling of anxiety rolled in. Sweat broke out and his breath came in short gasps.
For just a moment he feared, the deadly waterfall was now very near. For the first time in years, he did not even know how to formulate a question.
There was nothing.
No explanation.
No theory.
No words.
Only silence.
As he sat there, gripped by terror, from somewhere deep within his mind a faint light appeared… Soft, but increasing in size.
As he focused on its presence, a voice broke through the terror; warm and full of silent strength. Instead of facing the foamy, dazzling depth of the abyss, he heard, “Peace, be still.”
What?
Who is talking?
He blinked his eyes and stared around in bewilderment, but saw nobody.
The storm no longer raged. Instead of the foaming violence of fear he now floated in a calm stream of crystal-clear waters while a soft wind caressed his cheeks.
“I have questions for you,” came the voice again.
“F-for me?”
He no longer felt pushed toward destruction. Instead, a deep freshness filled his heart and mind. A quiet conviction, one he had never known before, rose within him as he listened.
“Why do you talk so much when you know so little?” the voice asked. “Now get ready to face me. Can you answer the questions I ask?”
Tears rolled over his cheeks as he felt strong arms of comfort around him. Somehow, he was being stripped of his pride. He became smaller and smaller, while the mighty arms around him grew in size; bigger, wider and more all-encompassing. The questions continued. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
On and on the questions were being fired at him. He threw himself on his knees and let the words wash over him. Cool, invigorating… refreshing. He was not being interrogated as if he were standing before a judge who had to balance the scales between the right and wrong answers.
He could not even answer one single question.
But the questions were not meant to shame him.
They were meant to free him.
And they came wrapped in mercy.
He did not know how long he laid there, but at last it seemed that life returned to its normal settings and he opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was his journal.
His wretched book, ‘Questions for God.’
There was only one thing to do. Burn it. Immediately.
As he stoked up the fire in his hearth and cast his book into the flames, the fire gave him joy.
Page after page curled up in the flames and all the questions disappeared.
The answers were still missing.
But for the first time in years… he could breathe as a child in the arms of the Father.
He still didn’t understand.
He still couldn’t explain all the how’s and the why’s, but he found shelter in the shadow of the cross, beneath the One who had given His life for him.
God was good.
Infinitely good.
And for the first time in his life, he no longer needed to ask his questions.
He rested in trust.