I always like to sleep with my beak tucked into my feathers on the highest perch I can find. And very nice and cosy it is too, as I gently rock myself off to sleep. Meanwhile, humans have to make their own artificial plumage called ‘nighties’ and ‘pyjamas,’ and because these aren’t as warm as feathers, they have to create a special roost on legs which they call ‘a bed.’ And the great drawback to this arrangement is that they have to sleep in exactly the same place every single night.
Sometimes my owner’s wife likes her ‘bed’ a little too much. When she’s lying there, all warm and cosy, she doesn’t want to get up in the morning and mutters about hibernating until the Spring. And so it was last Sunday when she didn’t want to get up in order to go to church. It was pouring with rain outside, and the sky was a lovely shade of leaden grey. Her bed seemed so alluring and so appealing. She’d only been in bed for around 10 hours; surely another five wouldn’t go amiss? Well, the two halves of her brain had a bit of a ‘discussion’ about this, and in the end, the half saying ‘you do need to get up’ won the argument, and so she duly went to church. And guess what, -she got more out of that service than she had out of the previous ten.
There are moments in our lives when we all have to make the effort to reach out to God. Sometimes we will, and sometimes we won’t. But you know, every time we decide to make the effort, God will respond and speak to us in some way. Every relationship is a two-way process, which is why we are told: “Seek and you shall find.”
My owner’s wife spent the rest of that Sunday with a spring in her step; the effort had been worth it, and it will be for you as well!
“Our best chance of finding God is to look in the place where we left him.”
(Thomas Merton: [1915 – 1968]: American Trappist Monk)
“If you’re sincerely seeking God, God will make his existence evident to you.” (William Lane Craig: [1949 – present]: American theologian, philosopher and academic professor)
“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; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
(Matthew 7: 7-8)
“God did this so that man would seek him and perhaps reach out to him and find him, though he’s not far from each one of us.”
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