“If we wish to make any progress in the service of God we must begin every day of our life with new eagerness. We must keep ourselves in the presence of God as much as possible and have no other view or end in all our actions but the divine honor.”
St. Charles Borromeo
I’ve often been told I need to “find” God. And I have. I feel like that’s a stereotypical Christian mentality or tagline to a conversion story: “I found God.”
This is so very true. There are many moments in our lives when and where we find Him. The problem with this idea, though, is that I’ve met far too many people who believe that they found God because He left.
Here’s the thing, friend. If you read my first article called “The Constant God,” we know that He’s always there. Constantly. Forever. We’re never getting rid of Him (not that we’d ever want to. What would life be? What would the point of my existence be? Those are existential crises for another day.)
I’ve used this phrase before, and I’ll use it again. “I found God again on my retreat;” “I saw God in that moment even though I hadn’t seen Him until then.” It’s not a bad phrase, and believe me, it’s not a bad lesson to realize that God was there.
But again, it’s this flawed mentality that I had to go searching for Him in the greatest depths, to find Him living in a cave somewhere far in the woods, and only if I went all the way to that dark place, I’d find Him.
No.
We need to seek Him. We can, and should, find Him in our every day, because we know He’s there and we want to look for Him.
But to find Him because He’s disappeared? Never. We don’t have to do that; we actually can’t do that, because we can’t find someone Who never left. However, we can uncover our eyes to see, we can open our ears to hear, we can mold our hearts to embrace His. Because friend, He’s already there, He’s always been there, and He always will be there.
Yes, we find God. We should be finding Him, in the sense where we seek Him in the everyday events and moments. But if we think we’ll only find Him when life is bad, or when life is good, then we’re not finding Him – we’re making Him a tool to use only when life goes our way, or only when life doesn’t go our way. We think we find Him only when we think we need Him.
But friends, we need Him. Always. God’s not a genie who only comes out when you need to make a wish. He’s a choice we make to have, or not have, in our lives – what a weird way to phrase our perfect God. But friend, because of our free will, He lets us find Him, seek Him, and choose Him… or not. We don’t have to. It’s our choice. And He finds us and meets us, always and forever. In order to progress in our lives, in a life of faith, in a true gift given to us by God to one day be united with Him in Heaven, we have to choose Him every day – as St. Charles Borromeo says, with eagerness. We need to keep Him in our presence constantly. If we’re not doing this, then we believe we have to constantly find Him, and that, as I’ve mentioned, tricks some of us into thinking that He left us.
In all moments of our life, we need to find Him. But, we need to realize that finding Him doesn’t mean He left; it means we left.
He wasn’t lost. I was lost.
And you know what? That’s okay. Because you’re back. And He loves you, rejoices upon your return, and embraces you so tightly after having the most outstretched arms… those arms, outstretched with love, very much so like the arms stretched out by His Son on the cross.
Find Him – yes. But choose Him, too, with consistency and eagerness. Seek Him, find Him, choose Him. Choose to recognize that He was always there, and always will be. That way, when you “find” Him again, you realize that He wasn’t lost – you were. And like a good shepherd, He sought you, found you, and chose again.
And He’ll never stop.
So, yes friend: find Him every day. But more importantly, choose Him everyday.
