I used to think that when I grow up, I’ll have answers to big questions. I’ll know how to be, how to say the right things, have good answers. Now I’m coming to see that answers aren’t as important as faith. And faith, it seems, is ok with questions.

Faith means being relaxed about the reality that some questions don’t have answers. Faith means asking questions and not demanding answers. Faith means taking the next step that is only dim but has enough light so as to keep me from losing my footing.

These days, when I ask God hard, big questions, He doesn’t shed much light on them. He doesn’t explain everything. He only keeps telling me that He’s with me and everything is going to be ok. Faith is at ease with darkness and questions, not with answers, as I’d thought.

My friends buried their third baby yesterday, a boy this time. It doesn’t matter that they already have five beautiful girls. It helps that they are surrounded with loving friends, but it doesn’t take the pain away. The questions of loss and wasted pain and empty arms don’t have any answers. Not in this era of reality. There is a deeper reality, which is where faith rests. Meanwhile, we hold hands and cry and ask for miracles. Faith believes in miracles, and there are no small miracles. Each one is amazing. Maybe the biggest miracle of all is that He, Immanuel, is with us.

Can I see another’s woe, and not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief, and not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share?
Can a father see his child weep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hear an infant groan, an infant fear?

No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird’s grief and care, hear the woes that infants bear –
And not sit beside the nest, pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near, weeping tear on infant’s tear?
And not sit both night and day, wiping all our tears away?

O no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

He doth give His joy to all: He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe, He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh, and thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear, and thy Maker is not near.
O! He gives to us His joy, that our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone He doth sit by us and moan.

(“On Another’s Sorrow” by William Blake)

Mark Galli wrote another excellent article here that resonates with truth and convicted me because it addressed things that me and my generation don’t usually like to think much about: servanthood, hidenness, faithfulness.

My Hero washed His servants’ feet and served them breakfast on the beach. It was the shape of His life, to serve. My housemate and I have a neighbor who washes our feet by keeping our coal furnace going. (We call him our ‘fire-making wizard.’) Only two young women find out about his service, but it is still significant. I have not lost the wonder of walking into a warm house late at night.

Eowyn was a woman who was tired of being hidden, tired of the mundane, hungry for significance and making a difference. Her exchange with Aragorn moved me profoundly last week when I read it again, and I found myself wanting to agree with her, taking her side, knowing how she felt. But I can’t disagree with Aragorn’s wise, strong, solid words:

Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.

It is an insidious part of our humanity that wants praise and affirmation, grasps it as if it could sustain our life. But what if it is service that sustains us? Nurturing that nurtures us? Insignificance that gives us life? Because it mirrors the shape and character of our Life-Giver.

I know it’s true, because I know my Jesus, and I know His followers, and they teach me what I need to know.

The group assignment was to take a 20 minute walk together. Enroute, we were to find something that depicts our life at the moment, and tell the group about it afterward.

I knew right away what my symbol would be. When we walked over the little bridge, I left the group and jumped/skidded down the creek bank. With a branch, I fished out a rock half the size of my fist. It glistened a deep reddish brown in my hand.

The analogy breaks down really fast, because I don’t want to be a hard, cold stone. The point of my analogy was that water smooths the roughness and brings out the deeper colors of the stone.

Whenever we walk on the beach in Ireland, we find lovely shells and put them in our pockets. But when we get home, the shells are never as pretty as they were when we found them. The water, in the place they belong, is what makes the shells beautiful.

In a blog post last week, Ann Voskamp said

A photographer had once told me, “You’ll find you will capture some of your best photographs on a grey, wet day. Want glowing, deep colors? Wait for rain.”

Do our tears saturate, intensify the colors of our lives?

Do we begin to see all as gift, when we stare face to face with losses?

Do we only begin to see when the eyes of our hearts are washed clean with tears?

I am beginning to see that in the design of the Master, running water smooths, beautifies, enhances the creation as well as the heart. And then I got a lovely message from someone very dear to me who recently walked through huge disappointment. She also found beauty from water:As we walked we came upon a stream under a stone bridge. The leaves under the water were bright like they were made of light, and just seeing that beauty gave some healing.

I know it’s true. Water soothes, smooths, brightens, gives life and beauty. I want to learn to joy in the rain outside and in my soul, instead of trying to avoid it.

It was an exciting week to live through, watching the development of the trapped miners’ dramatic rescue in Chile.

On the heels of my post last night, I came across this article in Christianity Today. The trapped miners were the springboard for his article. I was heartened to read Galli’s frank questions about prayer, and his conclusions:

First, we are to ask God for things that are important to us, no matter how we feel about God or prayer or the thing prayed for. In Jesus’ theology of prayer, there is no hint that prayer is the way we transcend desire, as if having desire was a sign of spiritual immaturity. Desire is apparently what humans do, something woven into the fabric of our humanity from day one, a divine gift, the first hint that we are made for something outside ourselves, a something that can only be realized by taking the first small step of asking. Prayer is not a way to overcome desire, but the first thing we do with it.

Second, once we announce our desire to God, it’s his job to deal with it. Prayer is not manipulating heaven to fulfill our desires. It’s putting what we desire into the hands of a loving, if inscrutable, God and letting him fulfill it in his time, in his way.

I once asked God for something very specific. I asked Him several times, and eventually, I felt Him distinctly say that I don’t know what I’m asking for.

He was right, of course. But I felt that even in the foolish asking, He didn’t mind hearing what I was wanting. I like that about Him.

I’m learning that it’s ridiculous to try to figure out what to ask God for, as if He will only pay attention to the request that suits Him. He just wants to hear what I have to say, like any good father.

I love what Fledge, the Horse, said to Polly and Digory in The Magician’s Nephew:

“Well, I DO think someone might have arranged about our meals,” said Digory.

“I’m sure Aslan would have if you’d asked him,” said Fledge.

“Wouldn’t he know without being asked?” asked Polly.

“I’ve no doubt he would,” the Horse said (still with his mouth full). “But I’ve a sort of idea he likes to be asked.”

I don’t know how prayer works, or how it moves God. But I love that He likes to be asked. And what’s more, His Spirit prays on my behalf when I can’t even verbalize anything. He really has thought of everything.

Ann talks about it here.

She says:

I had lived embittered at what I judged the injustices of this world but how I had missed that grace was the greatest injustice of all?

It is true–grace is not fair.

There is nothing more to say.