“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” - Jeremiah 29:13

Before I truly met God, I could quote you some CS Lewis. Biblical narratives in both the Old and New Testaments leading up to the Gospels, maybe sprinkle in a few things I’d learned in Sunday school. You know those elementary days when we’d sit on the floor and watch as the teacher told Bible stories with flash cards. Aweing and gazing at the cartoon scene in the Garden of Eden as Eve shyly reached for the apple. 

I could cite you some of the famous Christian platitudes, or explore and expound upon some pressing existential questions that tantalize Christian apologists like those of meaning, creation, and purpose. Or I could tell you some fun facts, an archeological discovery here, scientific phenomena there, or psychological principle that all point to biblical truths stripped down, how they point to Him.

I could tell you the latest I was analyzing in Scripture or all the knowledge I was amassing. Look, look how far I can go! I’d say.

But I could never tell you what it felt like to be held by Him. I could never tell you the sound His voice takes on in grief, or the look in His eyes when I had nothing but Him in front of me. 

I could never tell you until the world went into flames who was waiting for me in the midst of them.

Or tell you what it was like to hold His hand in the middle of a rocking ship, to be held and walked through the deepest of waters, still somehow finding myself by some miracle breathing. 

I couldn’t tell you the sound His heartbeat makes when I am still and listening for Him in the darkness. Or the way creation and all of its wonder and splendor take on pattern carefully constructed by His hand behind the veil. 

And I certainly could never tell you then, like I can tell you now, what it was like to be overwhelmed by His love, finally filled; thirsty, and discovering water; starving, and finally finding bread; gasping, and finally breathing.

Someday, the curtain will be unveiled and we’ll see; behold the image of the risen King, Jesus, and all our eyes will be opened. 

Someday we’ll walk the hidden steps mapped out for us in the universe and find ourselves home, where it all began, and I hope to find you there. 

But until then, everything in me can’t seem to forget those times when it was just us, sitting together in the silence of the room, never forgetting or neglecting that place by the window sill, the one that sits still and waits for us always. 

Until then, everything in me can’t seem to stop searching for Him everywhere in everything, everywhere I go. In every voice I hear or place I visit, searching. I think they call this a longing for home.

(Inspired by Robin Williams’ monologue in Goodwill Hunting)