I must have had a good night’s sleep when I decided to give my phone and car keys a “home base.” Now I’m so used to them being found that there’s no peace in the house if they ever go missing. Admitting too much perhaps, but it does paint a picture of what it means to be a seeker. There’s an urgency to it and an eager expectation to find.
Now and then one of my kids will say they are looking for some lost thing. But after a couple questions, I realize they have not really looked. They just want the problem to fix itself. I hear things like, “Someone moved it,” or “I already looked in the closet,” or the classic, “The dog ate it.” Then later I hear, “Well, it was in there under a sock.
It takes humility to seek, if you truly want to find. You are literally moved to your knees to look under stuff. You trek back to the same shelf a third time, admitting maybe you did not really give it a thorough going-over.
Not everyone poking around for truth is a genuine seeker expecting to find it. Today the quest is fashionable, but it’s not so popular to arrive. People are leery of claims to Truth. Truth claims, especially regarding faith, sound like some kind of bid for power–arrogance under a thin veil of idealism. Sometimes, that may be so.
The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is. – Phillips Brooks
The insincerity of someone wearing the label “Christian” is no excuse for one’s own prideful self-rule. No real seeker would let the hypocrisy of another person stand between himself and the truth.
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. (A.W. Tozer)
You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)
“To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.” (Tozer) This gives me an addition to a list of paradoxes. Willie Morris said, “Everything in life I have known to be true has come to me as a paradox.” Here are some other examples (not Willie’s): “To fear and not be afraid, that is the paradox of faith. ” “In death there is life.” “The end is the beginning.” “Crying becomes laughing.” “In the darkness, there is light.” “Presence is absence.” I would like to see others.
Nice Margaret. Here are a few that come to mind:
Strength is perfected in weakness…
Blessed are the poor in spirit…
The first shall be last…
Pride comes before the fall.
Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies…
Tim, great additions to my growing list. Thanks.
P.S. I love the dog picture. I wondered where those keys went that I never found!
Tim, Beautiful sermon today! I also loved the song you picked for Sarah to sing!! At the end of this post, you quote T.W. Tozer. I also loved the quote you chose from him to end today’s sermon. Can you give it to me again as I did not have time to write it down. Thank you so much for your insights and service!!
Kathy,
Same quotation. Cannibalizing my own stuff!
You are so special!