On my first day of orientation for seminary, I was given a notebook that had a quote on it. I had no idea how much I would come back to that quote to help me find encouragement through my seminary journey. The quote was from Rainer Maria Rilke and it said:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like booksthat are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
When I started seminary, I thought I was solid in my faith. I had grown up in church, was active in the youth group, went to a United Methodist school for my undergraduate, and had served in the church for several years at that point. However, as I started taking my seminary classes, I quickly realized just how much I didn’t know about my faith. It started to raise all kinds of questions for me about what I believed, and the fact that I had questions that I didn’t have the answers to was frightening.
It was in the times late at night when I had questions on my mind with no answers in sight that I would come back to this quote on the front of my journal. I had always loved answers because there was something reassuring and steady about having answers. For the first time in my life, I found myself trying to love the questions as much as I loved the answers. Along the way, I discovered a few answers, but today I probably have more questions than ever before, and I love it.
That’s really what the life of a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about. The first disciples had no idea what was in store for them when they started following Jesus. They didn’t have all the answers. They just followed and lived the questions as they went. By the time they were sharing the Last Supper, they still didn’t have the answers to what was next, but they just kept following. It was in living the life of a disciple that they were transformed, and eventually would get to live the resurrection life.
The same thing is true for us. When we follow Jesus, we don’t have to have all the answers. We just have to be willing to love and live the questions, follow where the Holy Spirit leads, and one day we will look back with amazement at the transforming work of God’s grace in our lives.
Rev. Josh Attaway, Edmond Campus Pastor
