Hide and Seek (Part 2)

I can't decide whether I'm really good at losing things or just awfully bad at finding them again. I can't recall the number of times I've had to borrow my wife's phone to go on a vibrating treasure hunt around the house. Is it down the side of the sofa? No. Perhaps I left it it the study? No luck. Bathroom? Nope. Wait a minute, there's a faint hum coming from the fridge. Eureka! I must have filed it with the cream cheese again. (Top tip: if you have a predisposition for losing things never leave your phone on silent.)

Not only is my wife generous in letting me borrow her phone in a crisis she's also very good at identifying something commonly described by women as 'male blindness'. In my own defense: (1) I usually expect things to be where I last left them (if I remember of course) and don't cope too well with them being 'tidied' and (2) 'it's on the side in the kitchen' isn't an adequate description if I'm expected to find something in a hurry.

Yes, finding is a really useful skill. Right up there with remembering to shut the front door when you go out to work in the morning and being able to cross a road without tripping over the curb*. It's therefore a great sadness to me that 'basic finding' falls firmly in my 'room to improve' category of essential life skills. My one saving grace is that, in a spiritual sense at least, our skill at finding doesn't appear to be something God tests us on too rigorously. After all in his great address to the masses Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7. Emphasis mine.) He didn't say, "listen very carefully, I'll say this only once. Quill and parchment everybody? Very good! If you want the good stuff in this life and afterwards you're going to have to really work on your sense of perception and logical problem solving. Eidetic memory anyone? Nice try Peter. I think you're all going to have to work on some basis memory techniques too. After all, when you get to those Pearly Gates you don't want to flunk the entrance exam! My my, we do have an awful lot to do and hardly any time left to do it. What's that Peter? No, sorry, it won't be multiple guess. Right, pay attention everyone, you don't want to be missing any of this stuff. And do cheer up Peter, it's not the end of the world!"

No, it seems to me that our ability to find the truth or remember the right answers to life's questions are not really all that important. The most important thing we can do is simply to seek (and ask, and knock): God promises to do the rest. I've heard so many encouraging stories of people having life changing encounters with God just through crying out to him. From a lonely and desperate Moroccan chap in Amsterdam meeting Jesus in his bedroom to Amazonian tribesmen having visions of Jesus out in the jungle before anybody has even told them who he is. God's not a master of stealth, he wants to be found, but we do need to do the looking.

I can do that. I may not be crash hot at finding things, or remembering where I last left them, but I can do the seeking. I just need to turn down the distractions and open my eyes...

(*The first I remember to do probably 99% of the time - go me! - the second I only seem to fail at on really busy roads with lots and lots of people watching - attention seeker?)