Blessing for Doubt

 

This week we’ve held our expectations and experiences of the Eternal.  We’ve begun to assess some of the assumptions that are operating in our faith just beneath the surface.  Honestly, this can stir up the dust of doubt.  We can start to feel uneasy or queasy about this venture.  We might even want to turn around the bus of our beliefs from this journey because it seems safer back there ~ before you began to think about what your beliefs and experiences.  We may want to rewind before you let the light of Christ shine too bright on your human size, beautifully, less than perfect life.  Let us hear this encouraging reminder that doubt is not the opposite of faith, doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  Doubt is the gift of life that is engaged and exploring and getting lost only to be found again and again and again to the delight of the Divine.  Here is one of my favorite blessings.

a blessing for the gift of doubt by Kate Bowler

Oh God, I long for understanding, but life is full of unanswered questions.
God, reveal to me what I need to know and for all the rest….show me how to live with so much uncertainty.

 

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself.. But I believe that the desire to please you, does in fact please you.…”
— Thomas Merton

 

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
— Voltaire

 

Blessed are we who come to You in the discomfort of our doubt, for we trust that our honest unknowing is a truer and better prayer than bootstrapping efforts at certainty.

 

Blessed are we, receiving the gift of doubt, for we trust that it is a doorway, freeing us to become that we could not otherwise have known.

 

Blessed are we, remembering that You God, hold all things together. You are the invisible scaffolding that supports us, the canopy of love that protects us in the present, the stable pillars, sunk deep into our past, and the Dove that flies confidently toward the future bearing for us the peace we could never have attained for ourselves.

 

Blessed are we, settling into the truth that there are things that we can’t know, settling into the humility that knows this one thing — that we are of the earth, and You are our God.

 

Notice this day what you do know and trust. thank God for it. And leave the rest.