Question the Mark This Instant!

Behold ... the flirtatious, curly-q of a mark, vivaciously easing up and over, gently around some gracious curve, poised to drift into oblivion. But it can't; it's halted by the bold blot of a definitive dot. It’s the question mark. Cute. Tantalizing. And demanding – it need only be present to elicit the squint of an eye, the raising of a brow.

This pen stroke, in and of itself, breaks the straight-as-an-arrow rules abided by its brother and sister punctuation marks. The question mark seems to have all the fun. But the questions it represents? Not so much fun.

I don’t like questions. No ... I just don't like questions that aren't followed by answers. I don’t like the kind that linger. The kind that ignore me after I've told them they're dismissed already. The kind that feign innocence while mocking me.

You know the ones I’m talking about. Mine say mean things like, "What's wrong with you?" "Why are you still single?" "Why aren't you earning more money?" Even the sucker-punch, "What if this God you say you believe in isn’t really real at all?" Maybe yours say similar things.

Questions, nagging questions. Questions that get under my skin and pry into the deepest crevices of my floundering heart. Questions – the kind without answers – really are the peskiest, and sometimes the near-deadliest thing. That is, of course, until you thrust one right back in its face. (Like this):

What if your questions didn’t have to have answers? Could you, in fact, learn to coexist alongside them? Could you let them rise up, like bubbles, and hang out while you go about your business? What if you made peace with your own haunting questions without having to exterminate them? What if you so deeply trusted the God who holds you, along with all your questions, that you could begin living as freely and definitively as an exclamation point? ! What might happen to your questions then?


"Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. 'You of little faith,' he said, 'why did you doubt?'" Matthew 14:31

"He must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind." James 1:6

My Own Gospel This Instant!

If I was asked to run the world, nothing would be as it is.

Text messages would be allowed 20 more characters each. Ice cream would be good for you. Ghost-white skin would be attractive. Neighbors would be quiet. Traffic lights would stay green. Skinny jeans and mustard yellow would stay “out,” where they belong. None of my friends would be married to their current spouses (not because I don’t like them, but because I was so sure their first-ever boyfriends would take that honor). Doctors wouldn’t get paid unless they actually resolved the issue. And I, placed in any given social situation, would be graceful and beautiful and smooth as a radio disc jockey.

Yes, life would be grand.

But, no. Instead, life just is what it is. Clunky and cumbersome and challenging and downright aggravating.

So, since I’m as “off” as I am on these fundamental matters, what would happen if I was assigned the task of writing the Gospel and figuring out how the entire human race can get right with God? My conjured-up religion would be pretty cut-and-dried:

It would involve me paying penance. It would involve rituals, because rituals make me feel like I’m doing something. My own gospel would involve ruminating, because pondering my sorry state shows that at least I’m aware of it. Rituals and ruminating … couple them together and call me accomplished. A little more effort, a little bit closer to God.

But, praise God, my gospel is not His Gospel. His truth – the real Gospel – is actually completely upside down from anything I would ever dream up … from anything any human could ever conjure up. God’s Gospel is bizarre. It has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Him. It’s relational, not ritual. It’s grace, not grief. It’s mercy, not misery. It’s love, not lament. It’s truth, not tricks. It’s Jesus, God’s only son, not “woe is me.”

What if you didn’t have to come up with your own gospel? What if the great Almighty, the three-in-one, the One with a crazy plan for redemption is pursuing you now just as intensely as He proved his pursuit 2,000 years ago? What if His truth never changed, yet the ways you could discover and rediscover it were as fluid as the blood that flowed from His side? What if His simultaneously ludicrous and wonderful Gospel could, in fact, set you free from the chains of your own makeshift gospel?

"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the LORD." Isaiah 55:8

"Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 'The time has come,' he said. 'The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!'" Mark 1:14-15