Holy Week questions

A couple of weeks ago I was sharing about something Elizabeth Johnson was writing about our capacity to ask questions. She said, 
 It shows first of all that we do not know some thing and yet want to know it: we have a desire for this truth...It also means in some significant way that we do have a hunch that something is there to be known...How many questions can we ask in a lifetime? It is without number. No one answer will ultimately satisfy us.

The second thing that Elizabeth identifies is part of this need/ability to ask questions. It is an infinite thirst for truth and an infinite capacity for truth, an infinite dynamism toward truth. For Elizabeth this infinite unsatisfied thirst will continue in our lifetime and only ultimately, be fully satisfied by God who is Truth.

The third thing is that our human nature has an almost constant experience of hoping against hope. In situations of desperate need, human beings nevertheless do not necessarily despair...There is a capacity in us to imagine a better future and to hope against hope for it.

In this season of Lent and particularly in Holy Week, it seems to me that these things really come to the fore in the story of Jesus and in our attitude toward Jesus. For the person who identifies as a Christian, Jesus is the answer to our question and thirst but we are never able to stop seeking deeper and deeper answers as our hope is so often challenged.

For the person who does not identify as religious or is a follower of another way, it seems to me these qualities still hold. We still experience this tremendous drive to ask questions. We still ask where our lives are meant to lead and what our daily joys and hurts and questions are all about. 

Why do we have this thirst to get to the bottom of things or, in other words, to seek the truth? Why do we hope even when there seems no way forward? I see this this as a call to each of us to deepen our search for the meaning of our lives. 
          

Our lives are drawn to 'more'; to longing; to pondering; to storing up...Wm. Wordsworth felt this I think in his poem, The Solitary Reaper. He sees a woman in a field 'reaping and singing by herself' and his final words are;

    Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
    As if her song could have no ending;
    I saw her singing at her work,
    And o'er the sickle bending: - 
    I listened, motionless and and still;
    And, as I mounted up the hill,
    The music in my heart I bore,
    Long after it was heard no more.