Looking for you

Starting in Eden, it was not Adam and Eve who went looking for God, ‘but Yahweh God called to the man, “Where are you?” He asked.’
God was looking for man. Later, though Noah could see that the world was full of wickedness, he had no plan, no work to do to fix this problem, but then, ‘God said to Noah, “The end has come for all things of flesh…”’ and gave him the instructions as to what he was to do. Not Noah’s search for God, but God’s search for a man who would obey Him. Our first father Abraham, though he lived among an idolatrous people and was offended, he would have remained there, had not ‘Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you…”’ Again, not man’s search for God, but a living and caring God looking for man. Throughout the Bible, this story, this true story, is repeated over and over again. It’s true that in Psalms, we read things like, ‘I have sought You with my whole heart, do not let me stray from Your commandments,’ but these words are the prayers of one whom God has already found. God looked for him, found him, and now he seeks God. It’s not that we don’t look for God, but that’s not how we find Him: He looks for us, He finds us, we accept Him and what He has done for us, and now we look for the God whom we know, to please Him who is our Savior and Lord.

In all the myths, you never hear of a god looking for man, only men looking for gods. When they don’t find them, since they know that there must be a ‘divine something,’ they comfort themselves with man-made gods and religions. Planting these seeds, they obtain trees which bear fruit after their own kind, from ancient times down to the present, fruit that may give wisdom and knowledge, but can never give eternal life.

But here we have a God, the God, who is looking for man, and when He finds him, there is no such thing as religion anymore. ‘I saw that there was no temple in the city since the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the temple.’ When He finds us, He plants in us His own seed, that grows in us and bears fruit after its own kind, fruit that will last, the fruit of eternal life. He is always looking for man. He is looking for me. He is looking for you.