Living the Questions

I'm just back from a week up at Nether Springs, mother house of the Northumbria Community.  Some personal work going on for me, just about managing to work out what the issue was an hour before I left! One day I'm going to organise things in an intelligent order!

Perhaps the most powerful gift of the community to me is their three questions:

Who is that you seek?
How then shall we live?
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

I find those question so helpful; what is most important to me - my career or my God? What are the implications for my lifestyle? How can I tell Jesus' story in a way that makes sense in this commodified and atomised world we live in?

The questions are profound, but it is the notion of "living the questions" that is most powerful.  I have to answer those questions anew every day, and our wonderful, infinite God seems continually to offer me new ways of exploring those questions.

To offer easy, neat and comprehensive answers to those questions would be to trivialise God. To seek the depths of the questions and to generate today's answers is to live a life of exploration into the heart of God - not a bad deal!

Comments

[Kathryn]

I found those really helpful, Caroline, and propose to stick them somewhere highly visible so that I can try and walk with them regularly.
Oh, btw you're not alone in the experience of realising what you should be working on as you stand on the doorstep to depart...not sure quite why, but this seems to be a recurrent feature of so many people's journeys, mine included.
Hope the whole week was life enhancing, anyway.

[Mike]

Those questions are incredible. 21 words that basically provide the framework for our very reason(s) for being. Wow - thanks for sharing them.

[Whitewave]

I put them on post-it notes. Very cool.

My best friend is a Northumbrian friend. I think that's what they call them. She's grounded way over here in Ukiah, California, so not many chances to pop in for a weekend retreat. But she likes their ideal.