Frederick Buechner, the famous Presbyterian preacher, writes of Gertrude Stein asking on her deathbed, "What is the answer?" Then, after a long silence, she asks yet another question. This time she asks, "What is the question?" Buechner concludes: "Don't start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.

We are much involved, all of us, with questions that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow — the immediate where's and when's and how's that face us daily at home and at work — but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about the things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value.