The Builders Sunday School Lesson for September 13 is the second in a series about Leaders in a Covenant community. "Gideon: A deliverer for the People," was to show that we can serve God, even when we do not have all our questions about God's ways answered. Whatever Gideon's questions, it did not overwhelm his faith. The writer said that this approach to faith was described by someone as "bracketing" . Rather than stumble over every question about God that occurs to us, we put "brackets" around the ones we cannot resolve. Then we step over them and continue walking in faith. In some cases, we return to those bracketed items later, finding that some of them have been answered. Others remain unanswered but may no longer seem to be important questions. A few others however, likely remain important..... and bracketed. In the human to human dialogue, a question must be answered or there must be an admission that the answer is not known. In the divine-human dialogue, however, questions from the human party often bring divine responses that seem to have nothing to do with what was asked and may make us feel that our questions are somehow unworthy. While it is disconcerting to have our questions go without an expected response, that is not to say that they have no function in our relationship with God. In his novel "Night", Elie Wiesel tells of the instruction in Jewish mysticism that his main character, a boy named Elieser, received from his tutor, Moshe the Beadle. At one point Eliezer and Moshe have a discussion about questions addressed to God, and Moshe insists that every question possessed a power that does not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," Moshe says, "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers" When asked why he prays, Moshe replies, " I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions." A Trappist monk once said that " to be a Christian was not to know the answers but to begin to live in the part of the self where the question is born" With the questions Gideon had, God's answer was in the verse 14, chapter 7 "Then the Lord turned to Gideon and said, "Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian: I hereby commission you. We have all been commissioned by God to do his work, even when we do not have all the answers, but it is within our careful consideration of our questions that God will lead us forward.