When I was about 4 years old, my mother bent down until she was level with my little face, pointed a red-nailed finger at me and asked, “Why did you do that?!” I vividly remember my shock. This was my first inkling that other people knew why they did things. Apparently, some could even put their motivations into words! I had come into the world an impulsive little person who raced through life on a wild tear, and I was to remain so well into my thirties, when God finally began to get through to me that it is sometimes better to consider before saying or doing whatever pops into my head; or perhaps, by then, the cat’s whiskers had been singed enough times that a few lessons had been learned.
Recently, I was asked a question, quite publicly and on the Internet, that begged to be answered… and yet, I heard God’s tempering voice holding me back. I sat at the keyboard staring at the question. It was clear that any answer might go sideways and backfire and that answering at all opened a conversation I did not want to have. My fingers hesitated over the keys.
As I always do now in such situations, I went to God in prayer. “Lord, what should I say?” I asked. In reply, God asked me, “Are you sure this is the right question? If you are so uncomfortable, shouldn’t you sit with this awhile? Why must you answer this question at all?”
On reflection, I decided that before I answered the question put before me, I should answer God’s questions first.
—K.D. Burnett