According to the chronicler of 1 Kings, the Queen of Sheba traveled across Arabia to ask King Solomon “riddles.” It’s doubtful that the queen asked Solomon, “What’s black and white and red all over?” No, the text suggests her questions originated from her innermost being, questions that plagued her mind and heart. In his wisdom, Solomon answered the queen’s questions. His responses so utterly overwhelmed her that she was left breathless. From Solomon’s writings—most notably Proverbs and Ecclesiastes—we know that Solomon was a man of the riddle par excellence.

Consider these from Ecclesiastes:

·       What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun?

·       Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them.

·       Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?

These do not even include the numerous riddles and perplexing questions that Jesus posed.

Nevertheless, human toil, poverty and oppression, sin and despair: all riddles that vex us.

These are not simply intellectual or academic questions, but they arise out of real life “lived under the sun.” As Chesterton said regarding sin, they are as “practical as potatoes,” they are with us all the time. Furthermore, they are deeply unsettling. Once the intellectual weight of the matter is lifted, riddles often leave a series of moral and emotional dilemmas.

As the church seeks to make the Kingdom of God known to ever watching world, it seems that we need to be a people of the riddle, committed to discerning the world’s questions and doubts as a means of revealing the beauty and truth of Christ.

What are the riddles that currently plague us? How does God address his truth to these enigmas? How does God ultimately untie the internal knots that bind us in doubt and confusion?