This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do. John 6:6

Questions are God’s way of bringing us closer to him. A relationship develops during the outworking – the back and forth – of unanswered questions. Once the answer comes the relationship growth brought about by that interaction changes or ends. That is why Jesus spent most of his time on earth asking questions or being asked questions rather than answering them.

Most of us have unanswered questions in our lives. They can range from the global to the deeply personal, from the simply annoying to the existential.

“What will we do when we retire and our income is cut in half?”

“Where will I get a house to live in that I can make a home?”

“Where is my life partner that I can marry and form a family with?”

Or as in John 6: “Where are we going to get enough money to pay for the food to feed all these people in our lives?”

The thing is: Jesus knows what he is intending to do.

And it will probably be something unprecedented in our experience.

Our tendency is to judge future prospects by past experiences. History does repeat itself and as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: There is nothing new under the sun. Even the feeding of the five thousand was not unprecedented. Elijah had done something similar back in the days of the kings of Israel.

However the disciples were not expecting the answer that Jesus brought and normally we don’t either. In our anxious going over of possible scenarios and calculations we usually never correctly predict what is going to happen.

For the really serious, heartfelt issues that we face about loved ones being sick or in trouble, or difficult changes ahead, or anything else that hits our heart’s desires, the answer will always be found when we find where Jesus is at rest in the midst of the storm, the answer he has to the cry of our hearts. “Rabbi,” (which is translated “Teacher”) “where are you abiding?” John 1:38.

He knows what he intends to do.