Читать книгу Destination Bethlehem - J. Barrie Shepherd - Страница 31

Looking for Something

Thou hast said, “Seek ye my face.”My heart says to Thee,“Thy face, Lord, do I seek.”Hide not Thy face from me.

—Psalm 27:8

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

—Matthew 24:42

These Advent days are days in which everyone seems to be looking for something. Perhaps it is the perfect gift for someone who has everything already, or it may be the ideal shape tree for that difficult corner of your living room. Is it a card with a message that seems personally selected for each of your two hundred most intimate friends, yet is also both ecological and economical? Or might you be searching for a place at which, or a person or persons with whom, to spend the holiday season? Perhaps your hunt is for that fruitcake recipe, so successful last year, those delightful new decorations put away so carefully you forgot just where you did put them, that totally unique experience which will make this Christmas truly unforgettable.

Is your search, perhaps, a more desperate one: a quest for a blessed infusion of cold, hard cash to beat back those grim tidings of great bills in the Christmas mails, or for a few additional hours in which to get every last thing done, or even for a little peace and quiet in which to pause and recall what Christmas is truly all about? Whatever it may be, in these early Advent days everyone does seem to be looking for something.

But this is hardly just the case in Advent. Is there anyone nowadays who does not know the regular frustration of mislaying some object, and then wasting precious moments, even hours and days, “looking for something”? I hope it’s not the advancing years that bring it on, but somehow things, previously inanimate objects—keys, checkbooks, shopping lists, umbrellas—seem to be developing a habit of avoiding me of late, avoiding and/or evading me. Have you ever found yourself, for example, wondering what it was you forgot in the first place, trying to remember what it was you had been trying to remember? That’s when you know you have a problem.

Literature too—that rich treasury of story, saga, and fable—is filled with searches. From the ancient quest of Gilgamesh through the sagas of the Norsemen, King Arthur and the Grail, the rings of Tolkien, and of Wagner, all the way to the science-fiction fables of tomorrow—and all of them looking, looking for something.

The scientific community nowadays with its microscopes and telescopes, its atom smashers and colliders, shares this same understanding of itself as engaging in a continuing search, a search for something yet to be discovered—the secret of life, the cure for cancer, the source of unlimited energy, the outermost limits of the universe, the innermost, most elemental core from which all other building blocks of being are constructed. And all of them, all of us, are looking for something. In fact one might reasonably summarize the status, the basic condition of this entire human race, in just these three words. Whether it be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the fountain of youth, or that glorious city of God described in the Scriptures, to be human is to be looking for something.

What is it then that we are looking for, beneath all these secondary quests, these intermediate investigations? What is it you are looking for? Are you looking for a home, a place you used to know and cherish, but which only now exists as a coziness and warmth, a belonging, back at the furthest reaches of the memory? Are you looking for a home?

Are you looking for prosperity? Not, perhaps, ten million dollars, but sufficient financial resources so you can break away from the monthly scraping and hoping over the checking account, afford the occasional something that is shiny, soft, and absolutely foolish, for yourself, and for those you love?

Are you looking for recognition, yearning for people to know you, who you are and how you are? (A bore has been defined as someone who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.) Are you looking for recognition?

Are you looking for adventure, something, anything, to break up the murderous monotonies of daily bread and then to bed, five, six, seven days a week? Are you looking for adventure?

Could it be health you are after, a confidence in your own well-being, so that you can make it over the hurdles, through the lurking pitfalls of life and, if not defeat that last enemy, at least die fulfilled at a ripe old age?

Are you looking for peace, peace in the world of course, but more than that, peace within? Do you seek peace with your own self, so that you can forgive yourself, accept yourself, even begin actually to be yourself, instead of the person you think others expect you to be?

Are you looking for love, that giving which is also, and uniquely a receiving, a receiving of another self, a beloved self, and then the receiving of your own self back again, refreshed, restored, renewed by the tenderness and concern, the laughter and hope, the fresh vision of yourself caught in someone else’s eyes and dreams? Are you looking, still looking, for love?

Then come with me to Bethlehem. Come, all who are seeking for any of the above to where we will find, if not the end of our searching, at least a new and true beginning, a key with which to open doors, a clue by which to solve life’s mysteries, a child in whose humble, innocent, and lovely birth we can find ourselves reborn. Come, take the road to Bethlehem this December morning, set out again upon this age-old, brand-new journey, and let us look for something, look for Christmas together throughout this Advent season.

President Howard Lowry of The College of Wooster used to describe in his freshman classes a boyhood camping trip into the deep caves of Kentucky. Far, far back, at last, among the stalactites and stalagmites, crawling along a narrow ledge with a guide and a few bold friends, they turned a corner and came upon a wall covered with initials and names of other campers, other intrepid explorers who had preceded them in years past. And there, by the dim, smoky light of a lantern, he discovered with a thrill his own father’s name, carved years before on a similar expedition.

The Christian church in our time—an era shadowed by terror, crime, corruption, and despair—today’s community of believers can be seen like that daring group, a search party, explorers risking the deeper, often darker facets of life to look for something. We have provisions for the journey, simple bread and royal wine to sustain the soul. We have our guide in him whose name we bear as Christians, whose wounded feet have marked the way ahead. We have our lantern shining-bright within the pages of our ancient, holy book. So let us pray that, as we search together, we too may turn that final corner, may reach out and trace our Father’s name; and thus know the search is ended, the lost is found, and we are home, and we are welcomed within our Father’s house, forever and forever.

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You are the Way, Lord Christ. Lead us, in our quest, to ourselves and then beyond. You are the Truth, Lord Christ. Teach us to know you, and thus to know ourselves in you. You are the Life, Lord Christ. So bring your Life to birth in us this Advent, until we come to kneel and to adore, to give ourselves, and lose ourselves, and find ourselves in you. Amen.