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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Unsolved heart questions

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart, Try to love the questions themselves...do not look for answers...
at present you need to live the question..." Rainer Maria Rilke



Lately, I've had trouble living the questions -and I've had a lot of them: About God and how He works; about me, and how I can live better; about our world - why there is so much woundedness and pain. In my quest to find answers, I've expended a whole bunch of energy trying to figure "it" out ("it" translated as whatever I think "it" should be). Most times I discover that the "it" I am trying to figure out has little to do with God's heart and intention. More often than not, I realize that I am looking for answers so that I can be comforted, feel secure, affirmed and assured that I'm doing "it" (again - whatever "it" is) well.

When I become tired of expending so much energy in what seems fruitless (figuring "it" out - or thinking I have, only to discover that the "it" I've surmised, defined and figured out did not truly solve my deepest heart need), I turn to diversions - I make assumptions, presumptions and rationalizations while trying to define and dictate what I think will be pleasing to God. But it is my limited finite solution that remains limited and finite. Or if that fails, I just get busy so that I don't have to face the inadequacies of my heart full of unanswered questions.

Another human struggling with unanswered heart questions wrote:

"Above all, trust the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new...
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  • What are some of your unsolved heart questions that you are living?
  • What are you feeling in suspense about - what are questions that you cannot answer in your life?
  • What feels incomplete?
  • Do you think that your longing for answers is an important part of "living the questions"?
  • Offer your unsolved heart questions and "in-suspense-ness" to the I Am - rest in His infinite, perfect and loving heart for you.

Incidentally, we weren't meant to figure "it" out because life is not an impersonal strategic action plan that we can organize and streamline with time-saving gadgets. Life is relational - inaugurated by the Great I Am - not an impersonal and innocuous "it."

Living the question is hard work...it is good work because we walk WITH Another who gently leads and liberates us (vs. gives us knowledge and answers and strategies for living).

www.paulagamble.com

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