“When Questions Lead Us”

Are you a morning person or a night person?  If you live with someone on a different schedule, you’ll know what I mean. The morning person wakes up ready to talk, bright, cheerful, and full of plans.

The night person? Still waking up — coffee first, conversation later. And then, by evening, it flips. The night person finally comes alive, ready for deep conversation. But the morning person? Already done. Eyes closing. Brain switched off. They can share the same bed and still somehow never quite meet.

Some people respond to God a bit like Abraham. God says, “Go,” and Abraham goes. He doesn’t know where. He doesn’t ask for details. He just packs up and leaves. Immediate obedience, even without understanding.  And then there’s Nicodemus. Nicodemus needs to think it through. He has questions. He needs time. So he comes at night.

Nicodemus was not a beginner in faith. He was a respected religious leader, deeply formed by the law, someone people listened to. And yet, one night, he goes to see Jesus. Quietly. Alone. We are never told exactly why. Maybe he didn’t want to be seen or he was cautious. Or maybe darkness was simply the only place he could be honest. Because sometimes, the people who seem most certain on the outside are carrying the biggest questions on the inside.

Nicodemus comes respectfully. “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher from God…” It sounds confident, almost like a statement of faith. But very quickly the conversation shifts. Jesus speaks about being born from above, about beginning again. And Nicodemus stops. You can almost hear the hesitation in his voice: “How can these things be?” Honestly, it’s a question many of us would ask too. It’s the kind of question that comes when we’re still figuring things out. That’s why this story connects with us. We all know what it’s like to carry questions we don’t say out loud.

Questions about what God might be doing. Questions about how these things can be. Questions that quietly unsettle what we thought we understood. Jesus does not really answer Nicodemus’ question in the way he expects. Instead, he speaks about wind, something you cannot control, something you cannot even see. Nicodemus comes looking for clarity, but what he receives is something he cannot quite make sense of. And that feels familiar to us. Our attempts to explain faith do not always give us the answers we are looking for. Rather, it becomes an invitation.

This Lenten season makes space for our questions, not the polished ones, but the real ones. The ones that shake us a little. The ones we carry quietly, unsure whether we are allowed to ask them. What if those questions aren’t getting in the way of faith, but actually drawing us deeper? What if bringing our doubts and uncertainties to God isn’t weakness at all, but trust? Like Nicodemus, we may not get clear answers straight away. But the questions themselves may be where we meet God.

Abraham’s story begins in a similar place. When God called Abraham, the invitation was not simply to move location but to step into a new way of seeing. He did not know where he was going. There were no guarantees. And yet he went, not because the path was clear…. but because the call was real.

Later on, Paul looks back at Abraham and sees something surprising. Paul does not describe Abraham as someone who understood everything clearly. Rather, he describes someone who trusted a promise he could not yet see, a promise that felt larger than his life, a future that seemed almost impossible. Paul says that this is what faith looked like: not certainty, not achievement, but trust in the God who gives life where there seems to be none. When we listen carefully, it sounds strangely familiar: Nicodemus asking, “How can these things be?” and Abraham stepping forward without knowing where it would lead. Different people, different times, but the same movement of faith.

And this is where Paul says something surprising. He does not focus on Abraham’s strength or on the quality of his faith. Instead, Paul points to God: the God who gives life to the dead, the God who calls into being things that do not yet exist. In other words, the story does not begin with Abraham’s faith. It begins with God’s promise. Before Abraham understood, before he could see the outcome, God had already begun something. This is where Nicodemus finds himself.

Nicodemus came at night thinking he was starting a conversation. But perhaps God had already begun something in him long before that walk through the dark streets. And perhaps that is true for us as well. Sometimes we imagine faith begins when we finally understand, when our questions are resolved, when we feel certain again. But Paul reminds us that God’s promise comes first. God begins, and we find ourselves slowly responding, sometimes with confidence, sometimes with hesitation, sometimes with more questions than answers. And maybe that is not a problem to solve. That is simply how we grow into what God has already begun.

Nicodemus does not suddenly become clear and confident that night. He leaves still wondering. And yet later in the story he appears again quietly, almost unnoticed still moving toward Jesus. A person still asking, already changing, still walking. Perhaps that is enough. For him, and for us.

So the invitation this Lent is not to force certainty, but simply to stay in the conversation. To bring our questions. To trust that God has already begun something, even if we cannot yet see where it leads. And to keep walking. Amen.