Stupid Questions

(Taken from Devotions for Teens-Susie Shellenberger)

If the Number Two pencil is really the most popular, why is it still number two?

Why is there Braille on the drive-through ATM machines?

If you try to fail, and succeed at failing, which have you done?

If all the world's a stage, where's the audience sitting?

There's a story in the Gospel of John that includes what seems like a stupid question. John 5:1-18 tells of a man who had been paralyzed for many years. Jesus found him in Jerusalem at Bethesda - a pool of water that was rumoured to be stirred by angels. Legend stated that the first person into the water after it had been stirred would be healed.

This pool was probably a hot spring or sulfur water that bubbled up from the ground. This particular man had waited by the pool for 38 years, hoping someday to be the first to touch the water's surface after it stirred in its mysterious way.

Jesus saw the man lying by the pool and approached him. "Do you want to get well?" he asked.

Do I want to get well? The paralyzed man may have thought. What kind of question is that? Why else would I have spend almost four decades lying beside a pool of water?

At first glace, it might seem as though Jesus asked a stupid question. After all, Jesus is God. He knows everything. He knew exactly how long the man had lain by the pool's edge, and he knew why. Yet he still approached the paralytic with the question, "Do you want to get well?" Since we know that Jesus is the source of all wisdom, there must be more to the question that we first see.
People don't understand the ways of God. Noah probably thought it was a stupid idea to build an ark. Up to that point in history, rain hadn't existed. The earth was watered by a daily dew. Only after the flood did God choose to water the earth with rain.

So, never having heard of rain, Noah may have thought it was a stupid idea to build a boat big enough to hold his entire family and two of each creature that roamed the earth. And why was he building this boat? To save himself, his loved ones, and the animals from huge torrents of "rain" he couldn't even imagine. But he trusted, and he obeyed.

God's infinite ways are beyond our finite thinking. When God's plan seems stupid on the surface, know there's much more behind it that could be life-changing!