ASKING THE BIG QUESTIONS

 

This time last year I bopped around the UK for a couple weeks: England, Scotland and Wales, working with pastors all along the way.  On the train I was reading (and digesting) Howard Thurman much of the time.  I ran across a passage that I emailed to one of my clients, after an especially authentic conversation in a coffee shop near a train station.

 

The streets of our mind seethe with endless traffic:

Our spirits resound with clashing and noisy silences;

While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in our living.

A direction, a strong purpose that will structure our confusion and bring meaning in our chaos.

We look at ourselves in this waiting moment - the kinds of people we are.

The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives? what are the motives that order our days?

What is the end of our doings? Where do we put the emphasis?  Where are our values focused?

For what end do we make sacrifices?  Where is my treasure and what do I love most in life?

What do I hate most in life and to what am I true?

As we listen, there is a sound of another kind… a deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear It moves directly to the core of our being.  Our questions are answered, our spirits are refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round.  With the peace of the Eternal in our step.

The questions are timeless.  But the idea of a waiting moment.  A pause, a time in-between eras and acts - that is where a lot of folks find themselves in this long winter of Covid, with a new world beckoning on the horizon ahead.  The questions go deep.  They are not simply strategic, about the shift to more online engagement, new paradigms of church membership and what have you.

I encourage everyone reading this to curate some space in these early months of 2021 to ask the big questions - for soon, the bars, the churches, the stadiums, the theaters, and many of the offices will be open again, and we will be spending too much time mindlessly in transit from one place to the next.

What the heck are we doing with our lives, and to what end?

A blessed New Year to all!