Ultimately: on asking more and better questions of life, of God, and of ourselves

I have an affinity for clouds.

Not the fully-overcast-day-type clouds (although I do love a good rain and that intoxicating petrichor), but the kind that are cotton, the ones that are ships and whales and the profile of a man you almost recognize in sharp contrast to the cerulean backdrop.

I spent a good portion of my waking hours staring at clouds in my youth. What rural North Dakota lacks in... well... everything, it makes up for in wide open skies. Our house was on the edge of town on a sloped hill overlooking grasslands and farmland, rows of corn sometimes, wheat sometimes, cattle sometimes. And open skies all the time.

Boredom would take me up and down the street on my rollerblades, discman in hand, volume spun up too loud but just right, left and right, left and right, up and down 3^rd Street South. I always wondered why the house across the street from us sat empty with no one living in it, why it was rundown yet the grass was always mowed. I also wondered why our neighbor to the north would completely till up his entire yard, digging up dirt, turning over sod, seeding and watering, only to till it up again months later, then again months later, then again months later. Did he not like grass? Did he think lumpy dirt was a prettier asthetic than green carpet? Was there something not quite right in his brain? We all wondered.

If thunderstorms were in the forecast, we’d know it hours before arrival, watching clouds come creeping up ominously dark across the plains. It became genuine entertainment, a favorite pastime, to gather on the front porch, me sitting on the flat-edged handrail, feet perched inside the lattice below, head resting against cream siding. Dad would tell stories and we’d all stare across the empty fields to the oncoming skyscraper display of strength and fierce-toothed wonder, flashes of disappearing light, low rumbles that swell to claps, eventually chasing us indoors with a whoosh of wind and rain.

Road-trips were my favorite cloud-viewing experience. In North Dakota every activity requires a road trip it seems. The nearest fully stocked grocery store was a full hour’s drive away. Our school wasn’t big enough to support its own sports team so we joined the neighboring schools in a co-op just to cobble enough kids together for 5-man basketball. On these drives for every occasion, I’d pass the time staring at the clouds and asking questions of God, of myself, of the world. What do those clouds see from up there? Lake Sakakawea? Do they see Bismarck? Do they see other people living other lives looking very different than my own? How many times has a water molecule paraded the skies in the form of a cloud since God said, “Let there be?” Millions? Has that cloud at one time seen the incarnate Christ? What’s it like to be up that high in the sky? I bet its perspective is incomprehensibly different than my own, given its vantage point across time, across the globe. I look so small down here.

This pastime is what got me interested in theology to begin with. I guess I’ve always been a head-in-the-clouds kind of girl, preferring the birds eye view, the forest to the trees, always taking one step back and one more step back and one more still, retreating into expansive panoramas of understanding. And clouds have a way of taking you somewhere. For me, they took me to bigger questions. I wanted to properly locate myself in the sweeping narrative of it all.

I found the game of questions interesting, and I included my pastor Dad on as many rabbit trails of thought as he had the patience to answer. Even more exciting to me would be the ones without answer but left hanging open in mystery. Did Jesus look mostly like Mary? Did Mary ever stare at him trying to see what God himself looked like, the half of Jesus that wasn’t her DNA? Things like this filled me with awe.

There was also some kind of reassurance I would find along the way too. I wanted to know how to live. I wanted to do what is right. As I got older, I wanted wisdom. I wanted to take comfort in what I understood from "up above" in those moments when "earth below” was sending mixed signals. I also didn’t want to waste my life on things that didn’t matter. I didn’t want to sweat the small stuff. I didn’t want to make enemies where there were none and draw lines where God had not delineated territory. In a way, I was looking for a road map of life. “How then shall we live?”

Years later, Bible college proved itself the perfect environment to air all my questions and curiosities. I took Bible and theology courses and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. The Minor Prophets? Yes please (turns out they’re not as obscure and harsh as I once believed and alarmingly applicable to today). An entire course on suffering and healing? I’ll never see pain the same way again. My theology courses and professors were most formational. These turned my feet permanently toward ‘conversations about God.’

That’s what theology is after all. The word is derived from the Greek words theos (God) and logos (word). Words about God. Conversations about God. And I wanted to be in every conversation, my chair pulled up close, hanging on every word and sharing in kind.

Professor Thurber had a way of explaining such heady and lofty ideas in ways that felt immediate and pragmatic. He’d trace Biblical precedents for doctrine from Genesis to Revelation, turning slowly each angle as this and that branch of the wider Church has understood and believed through history.

(Unrelated to theology, he also had a practical, matter-of-fact way of pairing up students like a Yente. What are you studying Amber? Music and Biblical Studies? And for what, again? To be a worship pastor? Trevor isn’t that what you’re doing too? You guys should get married. Really. You seem to have similar temperaments and backgrounds too. Meanwhile, Trevor and Amber have barely met and are simply seated in his class alphabetically. *spoiler- they, I mean we, did in fact get married.)

He also had a way of using the word ‘ultimately’ a lot, especially in answering questions. It was his favorite qualifier.

Ultimately, eschatological literature is highlighting God’s sovereignty over all and the Lamb’s victory over death.

Ultimately, you have to ask yourself what God is saying to you, and then listen and obey what He says.

Ultimately, this time in college is meant to form and fashion you into a more mature and learned adult, so... turn your papers in on time.

I quickly adopted the word as a kind of end-goal where theology is concerned. “Ultimately” gets at what is final, foundational, rudimentary. It strains out less important ideas or distractions to get at the fixed and sure. I started using it as a new framework to overlay my questions. What is ultimately most important? What is God saying here ultimately? What is this story, this book, this character, telling us of God and the story He’s telling through His people? What are all these little details ultimately pointing toward?

I found this overlay immensely helpful in two ways. First, looking for the ‘ultimately’ has given my heart a hug and my feet some direction when life has inevitably plunged me into darkness seemingly unlit by the light of Christ, claustrophobia mixed with hollow silence. Where do we go from here? How do we make sense of the senseless? Of great loss and pain? How do we sort through injustice and evil? Worse yet, what if it comes from the church? What do I do with my doubts? How do I navigate my friend’s deconstruction of faith, or worse, my own? Sometimes ‘ultimately’ has served as a kite. Other times, an anchor. In most desperate times, a lifeline.

Second, ‘ultimately’ has served me well in sorting out doctrinal differences in the Church and deciding where I make my home theologically. It has helped me not to get so caught up in differences that I fail to appreciate the unique expression of each branch of the mighty oak of Christ’s Church. I could worship in my home tradition while still saying ‘amen’ in another. It’s not that I decided distinctions don’t matter; I do hold to specific convictions that I find most faithfully wrestle with Scripture and what we understand of God and ourselves. It’s just that I hold these convictions in their proper place, with the wisdom to know I could be wrong and the good sense to not exclude a brother in Christ or my cousins in the faith for holding a different belief than I do in these lesser details. Besides, if humility is present, these distinctions make for great conversations together about the things of God, and isn’t that worship? Isn’t that lovely?

One big ‘ultimately’ I’ve taken on is to ask myself in situations, “Does this lead me to be more like Christ?” I can think of no question more important. Because that is the goal. It’s like climbing the mountain to get a better view only to discover that the One you find waiting for you at the top is all the view you need. 

As a pastor, this is something I deeply desire for the people of God: to ask more and better questions, to wonder with awe and fascination at the vastness of His works, to walk through life and especially in the house of God with humility, a fear and trembling in the fact that His ways and thoughts are higher (much higher) than our own. I want us to think theologically. All of us.

I deeply believe the Spirit draws us to Himself through our wondering, our questions.

Maybe its not that I’ve got my head in the clouds so much as its I’ve got my head in the Kingdom. And I want to see the Kingdom come down. And a Kingdom come down looks a lot like fog, making grey our black and white lines and issues. It’s not that the cloud cover makes everything questionable, vague, relative. But it blankets it in the presence of Christ like incense. Covered. Sacred. Held. Holy. Loved. It is only in the cloud of His presence that we are transformed and we can actually see more clearly.

So I say bring on the clouds. Bring on the questions. Ultimately, He will lead us home to Himself.

 What do you wonder about? What questions do you have of God, of life, of yourself?

I'd love to hear.