Questions Often Lead to Answers

"Have you not known?  Have you not heard?"

The Prophet Isaiah asks honest straight forward questions of those who have been rescued from Egyptian oppression.  Who have been continually cared for by this God who promises protection and sustenance.  And Yet they don't get it!

What is it that we do not understand?  What keeps us from really believing -- this marvelously gracious and attentive God?    Or, is it trust -- faith -- in what we’ve heard and what we know in our minds?  Is it that we find it difficult to believe?  Or, is it that we believe it  but we find it difficult to identify this truth with "me" personally?

With all of the questions that go along with such precious information about our Creator God there is also the divine presence of a tiny seed of knowing inside our overly logical minds. God has planted this tiny seed that leads to gradual growth into faith.  And this slow growing faith helps sustains our ability to stick with the questions.  And as we continue to question, and listen, and study, and wonder our hearts and minds are slowly being transformed into fertile soil for the tiny seed to grow.  To grow into knowing and hearing and living with a tiny trust in the mighty power of God’s undefinable thoughts and never ending faithful presence in our lives. 

You see, the hard work of faith is to live through what we have learned about God. What we know about God. Into a place of trust in God.  It takes time!  It takes prayer for understanding and insight!  It takes a child-like mind that is willing to believe without proof.  And, that is a difficult task for we well educated, mature, very capable and take charge adults to do.

But oh the joy of trying!!!!!!!!!

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40: 21-31)