“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
Luke 11:9-10
We read those words yesterday as a staff in our weekly staff meeting and in that space, they hit me like a ton of bricks. This morning, I flipped open the journal I kept this summer and it opened to these words, scrawled in the handwriting I use when I’m stressed or anxious, “…so I ask. Not for me to “settle”, but for God to exceed my expectations — because he can and he does.”
… and he did. Not at all in the way that I expected. Not even close to what I was expecting or even asking for. (For context, the above scribble was about a church in the DFW metroplex and, obviously, that is not at all where I ended up.)
I thought I knew what I needed. I thought for sure I knew what I wanted. I remember feeling so lost when I knocked on that door and it closed, hard, in my face. I was so angry and anxious and at the end of a very frayed rope. I was at the very bottom. But, as Richard Rohr so perfectly states, “It is at the bottom where we find grace; for like water, grace seeks the lowest place and there it pools up.”
And it was there, at the bottom, where the real answer was given, and the real door was opened. I don’t write this from a place of knowing or understanding, not yet. I simply write from a place of wonder.
Peace be the journey.
The Messy Faithful 
Never forget that Wonder is the beginning of Wisdom. In my years of ministry with children and families, I carried a “Wonder Bag” in which there was always a Bible. Weekly, other items would be in the bag so that kids (and trust me, adults too) would Wonder as to what was inside. Sometimes there were treats that kids could reach ina grab if they could answer “Wonder” question about a Biblical text, a memory verse, a God-sighting, or a SS lesson. I would ask “but what is always in the Wonder Bag?” They would say “The Bible!” And then I’d take it out, hold it up and say “The Bible is God’s most Wonder-filled Book. Everything in it is true, but not everything is happy. It is filled stories of history of God and His great rescue plan for God’s creation. It tells us the stories of God’s great Love and rescue even when people do the wring things. We should always Wonder about what’s inside.”
Keep WONDERING my friend!!
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