Sunday: The Eternal Quest and the Eternal Finding
WEEK 6
SUNDAY
THE ETERNAL QUEST AND THE ETERNAL FINDING
Luke 11:5-8
We come now to a mastery of real importance—the mastery of the eternal quest by the eternal finding.
A Jewish rabbi said to a friend of mine, “Our faith is an incomplete faith. We are always looking for a Messiah who has not come and for a kingdom that is not here. Ours is a religion of quest, of hopes unfulfilled.” The vast majority of humankind, inside and outside the Christian church, belongs to the category of the unfulfilled faith. They belong to the eternal quest instead of the eternal finding.
But these followers of Jesus in the Acts belonged to the eternal finding. They weren’t dealing with a future but with a fact. They could say, “This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel. . . . This Jesus . . . was exalted to God’s right side and received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit. He poured out this Spirit, and you are seeing and hearing the results of his having done so” (Acts 2:16, 32-33). They used the word “this” instead of “that”; it was present possession, present experience. The eternal quest had become the eternal finding. They had found God because God had found them, found them in Christ.
I have lived the larger part of my life in a continent of seeking, India. In India is to be seen the greatest God-hunger that we have ever found on this planet in any period of human history. It is a God-thirsty nation. But the impression one gets is that it is a quest rather than a finding. I have listened in at my Round Table Conferences, where the best representatives of India’s religions were found, have listened for the note of finding. But I have listened in vain except where people, whether within or without the Christian church, were in contact with Christ. There the note of finding was heard. And it was heard to the degree of that contact with Christ. Where people were in contact with Christ, there the eternal quest had become the eternal finding. They weren’t looking for something; they had it. And that made them witnesses—witnesses instead of mere worshipers. In Christ, God invades us, and that invasion becomes a pervasion. God comes within.
O Lord, we thank you that the dissatisfied quest is over, and the satisfied quest takes its place. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am passing from the eternal seekers to the eternal finders through Jesus Christ my Lord.