Unsolved Questions

I have a tendency to live in the future. As we begin this new year, I have pondered, somewhat anxiously, about what will happen in this next year. And what will happen in the next five years? Or the next ten years? If I had it my way, I would have the path perfectly planned all the way to the end of my life. But, of course, none of us are afforded that control. That is not how God designed us to walk through this life.

The not knowing, however, can be an invitation. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the following to a young poet who was wrestling with the uncertainties of life:

“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.”

I think the opening of this statement, a call towards patience with all that is unsolved, is another way of saying “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46). It is an invitation to calmly trust God in our present situations, even though there may not be tidy solutions to our problems.

May all our unsolved questions draw us near to God, which is our ultimate purpose and good.

Dr. Jill Schroeder-Dorn, Director of Worship Arts