February Prayers | The Gift of Questions
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
-Matthew 7:7-8 NLT
Dear Friends,
Uncertainty lies underneath so much of our lives, whether it’s environmental or political unknowns, personal health, relationship or vocational questions, or simply the great existential ones: What is my purpose? Are you even real, God? At our first gathering of the semester, we offered time for students to explore the uncertainty in their own spirits and to anonymously write down the big burning question that uncertainty surfaced.
This month, take some time to acknowledge the uncertainty in your own life, and the questions that sear in your soul. Then, and maybe even more importantly, ask for someone close to you to do the same, hear their questions and let them find space in you. Finally, bring all of these questions to the Father.
Gift
Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.
By Denise Levertov