“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Some people are terrified of questions. I mean really scared to death. Having to know how everything is supposed to go and what will unfold in the future can consume a person – swallowed whole!
Along comes Rainer Maria Rilke with the sage advice to learn to love the questions. For me, living into the question is a much more interesting prospect than being confined by a fabricated answer. By fabricated I mean forced, guessed at, or simply assumed because someone said so! Loving the question is a not always easy. It requires faith that when the unknowing causes us to tremble and shake, the God of all consolation is holding us, protecting us and whispering in our ear; “You are not alone. We cannot always know how things will work out. I love you – there is no question!”
Does your heart yearn for an answer to a vexing question? Do you find yourself frustrated at the lack of answers? I know my answer to those questions is YES! I pray for patience to live into the question, for the obedience to rest in God’s care, for strength to gradually experience the answers — some distant day.

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