There’s this really amazing lady called Elisabeth Elliot, who says that faith doesn’t eliminate questions, but it knows where to take them. That got me thinking. If someone as knowledgeable, respected and, well, as down-right holy as Mrs Elliot has questions, it must be ok if I do too.
Sometimes those questions can be huge, though. We let those questions, the doubts about our faith, take over. They grow, and seem to take root somewhere deep down, which makes us wonder how all this faith business fits together. If X isn’t true, then how can Y and Z work? Before you know it, you’ve got an algebraic problem that not even a calculator with all the numbers and letters and symbols and stuff can solve.
But at threads, we love questions. We are scratching our heads about faith and life and what they have to say about each other. We are curious. We are wrestling with questions where there used to be answers, and are passionate about working it out together. It’s natural to have questions. Some Christians might look as though they have it all figured out, but we think that there’s honesty in questions.
So we decided to put down our laptops and log out of Twitter. We’re taking threads offline and heading to The Pursuit, to see that expression of honesty blossom into a deeper faith and an authentic relationship with Jesus.
We’re bringing our secret (doubt) garden to Grantham. This is an opportunity for those secret doubts to be discussed and debated by peers, starting a conversation that we hope will show you that God is big enough to hold the questions.
The Secret Garden will be open 24 hours a day, and we would love you to drop by. Come and decorate our trees with your own secret doubt, and perhaps read others while you’re there. We’ll have all kinds of crafty essentials for you to make leaves, flowers and whatever cool things you creative types can come up with. Do you have an answer to another person’s question? Come back at 4pm each day and join our garden party. We’ll have pink lemonade, ice cream and answers. Maybe someone will offer an explanation for yours, or perhaps you’ll be the one doing the answering. Or if there aren’t easy answers, we’ll be there saying: “yeah, us too.” Our party will be a discussion between like-minded millennials who are pursuing the truth.
By the end of the weekend our garden will be full of doubts – scribbled onto the leaves and petals that fill our space. Others will be taken home, given some more thought and then turned into a post for threadsUK.com.
Don’t let those questions grow. Come with your questions and your creativity and together, we can turn those into something beautiful.