Powerful Questions
By Marilyn Pagán-Banks
CRS Board of Directors
Executive Director, A Just Harvest
Pastor, San Lucas UCC
Adjunct Professor, McCormick Theological Seminary
Will the Lord reject forever? Will God never show favor again? Has God’s unfailing love vanished forever? Has God’s promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has God in anger withheld compassion? - Psalm 77:7-9 (NIV)
I am currently training as a certified professional coach, and one of the main competencies taught is the asking of powerful questions. As a coach, we are not to provide the answers that our client is seeking to find, but to ask the types of questions that will allow them to uncover and discover the answers they are seeking for themselves and to gain clarity on next steps. Coaches accompany clients as they do their own work.
While it doesn’t appear that the psalmist had a coach, it is clear they remembered how God has always accompanied them. In their despair and pain, they remembered all that God had done over the years. The cries became questions, and the questions led to deeper clarity and a renewed conviction: that if God did it before, God can do it again.
Perhaps this is why the seasons of the church are so important. We don’t all have coaches, but we do have the story of a love so profound that God wrapped it in flesh and dwelled among us. A love so magic that death could not destroy it. A love that is present and possible for all creation to experience.
The season of Lent is an opportunity for us to turn back to God, again. To recall the story of God’s liberative love as modeled in the life and ministry of Jesus. To have the courage and humility to ask powerful questions of ourselves as followers of Jesus and as the church, with the intention of living truly transformed lives and to be the church.
Prayer
Gracious God, when we don’t have all the answers, please help us to ask the right questions. Amen.
Marilyn Pagán-Banks
CRS Board of Directors
Executive Director, A Just Harvest
Pastor, San Lucas UCC
Adjunct Professor, McCormick Theological Seminary
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