Usually before we believe, we contemplate

Driving down the highway recently, I noticed a big billboard in front of a church which read, “Jesus is the answer.“

I knew what the well-meaning church was trying to convey, but my mind went to all those people driving by for whom it wasn’t clear. I could hear them saying,

What do you mean, Jesus is the answer? What’s the question?

The reason the question wasn’t stated is because they assume that for most people the question, or questions, are implied. Whether or not that’s a safe assumption, what the church is trying to say on their billboard is that Jesus is the answer to life’s big questions.

What is the meaning of life? Where do I find hope for the future? How can I deal with my deepest problems? These are the questions the church has in mind when they say that Jesus is the answer.

For all these questions there are competing answers in this world, but what the church is saying is that Jesus would be the very best answer.

A skeptical, doubt-ridden guy by the name of Thomas once asked Jesus this straight-up question: How can we know the way [to God]?

The answer Jesus gave to Thomas is the reason for the message on that church billboard. To Thomas, a person who, like many of us, was grappling with life’s hardest questions, Jesus said:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man comes to the father except through me.”

-Jesus, John 14:6

In other words, the Lord was telling Thomas that the answer to the questions deep down in his bones was standing right in front of him in the person of Jesus. This was an audacious claim, to be sure, but Jesus backed it up with a whole portfolio of miraculous proofs. And for Thomas, the resurrection of Jesus would be the clencher.

The answer to the question wasn’t three steps, Five Pillars, or some hard-to-follow pathway. Plain and simple, the answer to the question was, and still is, Jesus Christ.

It’s a new day with God. Run with it.