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