This prayer requires preparation. Each participant is asked to gather at least three scriptural questions. Throughout the Bible there are questions that people have addressed to God, or to one another concerning God, or that God addresses to us. The aim here is to experience that our faith is a faith full of questions. Select one question from the Old Testament, one from the Gospels, one from the remaining new Testament books ... or assign each person a different book...or leave everything up to chance. This task can be done in advance so that people come together with their questions already in hand. Or spend the first fifteen minutes separately, searching the scriptures in silence. Be sure then that you provide enough Bibles for all.

Begin by gathering in a circle. Light a candle if it helps the mood. Savor being still.

LEADER:
We are so sure, so certain, about everything, even God.
We seldom dare admit to question. We rarely admit to doubt.
Yet the ways of the Lord are mystery. Who really understands?
We turn to you for guidance, God.
We who have all the answers now listen to your Word.

TIME OF SHARING:
     Invite the group to share prayerfully, at random,one at a time, the scriptural questions they have brought. Perhaps in the presence of the Spirit, these will resonate with those questions lurking in the secrecy of our hearts.

     You might begin with one of the following questions, just to get things started, interspersing the others from time to time. Whether the group numbers 5, 55, or 105, the questions are usually varied. Some are sure to hit home.

+ Am I my brother's keeper ? (Gen. 4:9)
+ How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all the day? (Ps. 13:2)
+ Who are you, Lord? (Acts 9:5)
+ What sign will you give to show us that we should believe in you? (John 6:30 JB)
+ How can a grown man be born? Can he go back into his mother's womb and be born again? (John 3:4-5 JB)
+ What is truth? (John 3:4-5 JB)
+ Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? (Matt. 18:1)
+ What about us?... We have left everything and followed you. (Mark 10:28 JB)
+ In that case...who can be saved? (Mark 10:26 JB)
+ Master, do you not care? We are going down! (Mark 4:38 JB)

When the time of sharing is finished,the leader sums up the experience with the following prayer-reflection

PRAYER-REFLECTION

We thank you God for the insight and the comfort of your Word. We are grateful to discover that our faith is full of questions, that you were questioned often even by your best friends:

Abraham mocked: "Is a child to be born to a man one hundred years old?" (Gen. 17:17)

Moses: "Who am I to go to Pharaoh?" (Exod.. 3:11) and the questions of all the prophets uncertain of their call...
Jonah: How dare God salvage Nineveh after he had announced its doom!
Job: Why me?...and Mary: "How can this be for I have no knowledge of man?" (Luke 1:34)
John: "Are you the one who is to come or have we to wait for someone else? (Luke 7:20)

Jesus himself: as a child daring to question the rabbis...daring to question his Father: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Mark 15:34).

Help us, God, to live with questions, to cope with the ambiguities that permeate our lives. You alone are the answer, revealed to us bit by bit. We praise you, Known and Unknown and go forward in faith. Amen

BENEDICTION: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart...try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
(Rainer Maria Rilke)


Prayer service by Miriam Therese Winter MMS God-With-Us Medical Mission Sisters, 1979. http://mtwinter.hartsem.edu


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