When it comes to God, most of us have a lot of unanswered questions. For many, theodicy (the question: “If God is good, how can evil exist?) is the biggest issue. Theologians have grappled with that for centuries, proposing one theory after another in answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people. None of them truly satisfy us when we are personally impacted by the bad things. We want to know “Why me?” “Why now?” “What did I do to deserve this?” And the answers don’t suffice.

Another question we find it hard to get a handle on is who God is. “I Am,” the answer God gave Moses to tell the children of Israel (Ex.3:14), brings up more questions for us than it answers. Be-ing? Is-ness? What? God is love (I Jn.4:16b), but is love a noun or a verb? The questions tumble over each other, swirling around in our heads. Then there’s the question: “Where is God?” We know he is transcendent, beyond the limits of human experience, but we also know he is immanent, present with us here and now, Emmanuel. How can that be? Outside, inside, both at the same time? It is a mystery.

I have a friend who, when questioned about some aspect of the mystery of God, says, “That’s the first question I’m going to ask God when I meet him face to face.” He is trusting in Paul’s expectation expressed in his first letter to the church in Corinth: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then will I know fully, even as I am fully known.”(13:12) The prospect of knowing fully is wonderful to look forward to, but in the meantime, what do we do with our questions that keep rising up to devil us? Two Episcopal priests, Marianne Micks, former professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, in her book, Loving the Questions, and Margaret Guenther in Living the Questions, have provided their answers where they suggest we can experience God in the midst of the questions and trust God to use the questions to draw us ever more deeply into relationship with him. Rather that ignoring or trying to blot out the questions we have, we are called to acknowledge and celebrate them as opportunities to come to know God on a deeper, more intimate level.