The church sign along the road reads, “Jesus is the answer.”
There is a story about a pastor describing an animal for the children to guess during Children’s Time in worship. Small mammal, bushy tail, climbs trees, likes nuts. One child’s hand goes up. “I know the answer is Jesus, but that sounds a lot like a squirrel.”
Dear Jesus, I hold out my hands, unclenched to show you the questions for which I have no answers: pain that is slow in healing, money woes without solution, the body deteriorating with age, intentional injury that defies logic or love or decency. I resist the church sign. Is “Jesus” the simple answer? Looking back, I see that you offered more puzzles than answers; that still seems true. So I will sit here, with palms open and unresolved prayers, o complex Jesus, if you will sit with me. This I ask, for lack of answers. Amen.