I’m thankful for the freedom to ask questions

---

---

I’m wondering what this little chipmunk is asking. I don’t know if he can ask questions or not but if he could ask one I’m guessing it would be this: “When will you shovel the snow off this deck and put out more sunflower seeds?”

I am a questioner. I always have been. During times of my life when people discouraged me from inquiry, I did not stop questioning. I took my questions to God and he answered them. Not always immediately. Sometimes, not for many years. Though I still have many unanswered questions, I have not given up asking. I believe the answers are coming.

• I am thankful and humbled that God gives me the freedom to ask questions! It’s a part of being human. Children naturally ask questions. What questions did you ask when you were a child? Were questions acceptable? All questions or just some questions? If you’ve been put down or shamed for asking questions, know that God loves to hear your questions. “Ask me,” he says, “and I will tell you remarkable secrets about things you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3 NLT).
• I feel thankful and overjoyed when God answers my questions! Often, as I am meditating on Scripture, he gives me a new insight and unexpected answer to one of my questions. In response, I write and sing a melody of gratitude.
• I am thankful for the amazing ways God provides for me. I’ve asked for knowledge, understanding, wisdom, guidance, healing, strength, forgiveness, justice, and mercy, and he’s answered in unexpected ways.
• I am thankful and awed that God gives me the choice of accepting or rejecting his answers to life’s questions. I can freely choose “life or death, a blessing or a curse”. (Deuteronomy 30:19)
• I am thankful and amazed, as with patience and love, he reveals to me both the consequences and benefits of accepting his wisdom. He always desires my good, feels grieved when I act foolishly and gives me unnumbered opportunities to change direction. He is patient . . . not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9 NIV)

Today in my country, I wonder if either those who call for “freedom of choice” and those who oppose it really understand what that freedom involves.

No one who demands we comply with their authority without asking questions and/or withholds information which we need and are entitled to displays the character and conduct of Jesus.

If we call ourselves his followers we cannot justify unquestioned compliance and secret-keeping in situations where a knowledge of truth is necessary. Freedom to live according to our own conscience is our God-given right and responsibility. Freedom to judge the conscience of another is not our right.

I hope we will stop fearing questions and continue to respectfully ask them. I pray that we will put aside arrogance and humbly listen to one another, genuinely seeking to understand differing points of view, and doing all that we can to promote unity and peace.

There are plenty of “chipmunks” in our world who are “snowed-under” with needs and hunger. They are not asking for sunflower seeds but for mercy and justice. None of us know it all. Let’s give up our arrogant “right to always be right” and fight for those whose rights have been stripped away.