I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

That elusive item just out of your grasp, barely beyond your reach.  You strive for it and yet it seems to escape your attempt to gather it in again and again.

“I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you”

Our faith can be like this at times.  Our relationship with God and our seeking of Him waxes and wanes like the moon, goes in and out like the tide.

“I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you 

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for”

Being in Ireland and Northern Ireland this week, it would almost be sacrilege not to highlight a song from one of Ireland’s best-known bands, U2.  Being here in Derry the past few days, the site of Bloody Sunday in 1972 (described in one of their other songs “Sunday Bloody Sunday”), brought this band to mind over and over.  The song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was arguably their first big US commercial success
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_ISAntOom0).  I see it at a great testament to their own continual seeking and the role faith plays in the band’s music.  There are other great examples of this in their catalog too.

Is it OK to question, to seek?  I have certainly spent my share of time doubting God and His role in my life, looking for Him in all the wrong places.  Most times, I did not even know I was looking for Him.  As I sought fulfillment from the things of this world, desired validation by man, I burned weeks, months, years.  I spoke the chorus of this song in words and in my heart over and over.  Maybe you have too.

“I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone 

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for”

In Luke’s Gospel, just after Jesus teaches how to pray, giving us what is commonly known as the Lord’s Prayer, He talks to us about our searching.  He does not admonish us that we have questions.  He recognizes the journey we are on and that our endless inquiry, pursued with persistence, will lead us no other place but to Him.

“ 'So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’ “ (Luke 11:9)

The problem we have at times is that we stop looking.  We think we’ve found that which satisfies, and our searching ends.  But after a time, we thirst and hunger again.  We know there are still miles to go in our seeking.  Even when we recognize that we seek Him, our doubt creeps in.

“I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running 

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it 

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for”

So, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep asking.  Don’t settle for that which is convenient or comfortable.  God is rarely found in a place of complacency, but rather in the setting of that which challenges convention.  When you think you have gone to earth’s end and to your own, He will be there.  And even when our faith falters, our walk becomes a crawl, He welcomes our seeking and welcomes us Home.