The Ask

A three-year-old asked his mother a question.

And then another question.

And then another question.

Like a robot on repeat, the child just kept going and going becoming lost in the melodic rhythm of his Why's and What If's until finally, in order to maintain her last ounce of sanity, his mother answered.

Big mistake.

The child burst into tears as soon as the words escaped her mouth and within seconds, his eyes became free-flowing, never-ceasing, are-you-kidding-me miniature waterfalls. “But mommy why did you answer??” he asked, acting as though she had committed a terrible, shameful crime.

Can you blame him?! Ok maybe this is a slightly dramatic example but it proves a powerful, unavoidable point: Sometimes questions are meant to be just that…Questions.

Last month during training for my current job, we discussed inquiry-based education and the importance of encouraging kids to explore their own questions.. ya know, get lost in the wonder of it all. And well, I don’t think that should necessarily stop with children.

Adulthood comes with a curse, I dare say. And part of that curse is that we forget how to ask questions. We forget how to wander around in our own curiosity and imagination as we actually admit to ourselves, Hey… maybe I don’t know everything.

If you look at the stories of Jesus, He always welcomed questions. In fact, He asked a lot of questions Himself and even answered others’ questions with a deeper question. You know, I am not quite sure where in the life of Christianity that we decided questions were bad, that questions were scary.

I could not disagree more with that idea. I believe questions pull into a deeper sense of who we are. I believe they pull us into someone who knows more than us, someone we will never fully know on this side of life because He is simply more profound and more complex than we could ever imagine.

I believe questions have a unique power to draw us into heaven, a place where our questions will one day be answered and we will stand face to face with our Creator, our ultimate Answer.