Lent Week 3 - Seeking God

by Jameson Ross

I grew up in an American Christian tradition that didn’t observe the season of Lent. Now, it’s a period of the Church’s calendar that does play a role in my Christian imagination, but the general feeling I have when it rolls around each year is mostly one of conflict. I think there are a couple of reasons for this: First, Lent asks participation: will I or won’t I engage intentionally with the traditional rituals of Lent (ash on my forehead, fasting, confession, etc.)? That’s a question I find difficult to resolve. Secondly though, my uncertainty stems from the complicated nature of Christian existence, a point of emphasis for these days of preparation leading to Good Friday and Easter.

What is this complicated Christian existence? Well, it might be described in reference to the theme for this week, namely, Seeking God. On the one hand, we are encouraged in the Psalms to seek God. On the other hand, though, we are told in Romans chapter 3:10-11, for example, that “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding; there is no one who seeks God.” It can sometimes feel like we are encouraged to think about seeking God almost casually, as if we were playing a game of Hide and Seek. Only a little reflection, however, makes it clear that this isn’t quite right; there are both similarities and differences. Part of our inability to find God in this way is simply that God is not an object in the same way that another player in the game of Hide and Seek is while in their hiding place.

Things are more complicated still, though. We can only seek to find the thing we are looking for, which is to say that we need to know the thing itself in order to set out to find it. In the case of seeking God then, we have the challenge of both knowing and not quite knowing who it is we seek. One more: in the case of God, we can become convinced that the idea of seeking God itself is something of a myth. If we are in Christ, we could wonder, then isn’t the God-shaped hole in all of us already filled or satisfied, leaving us with little to seek after? Isn’t “seeking” God simply a creative way of talking about something already accomplished for us?

One of the gifts of Lent might be this tension-filled dynamic. This is a time in the Christian year to attend to the challenges of the Christian life, challenges brought about by our very human limitations - our sin, our distractions, and our exhaustion. With respect to the idea of seeking God, we are forced to wrestle with the fact that even though we want to settle down with God in a personal relationship, we must recognise that God is not simply to be found as is a player in Hide and Seek. St. Augustine in his Confessions, described God as requiring us to run after him as he runs just out of reach in front of us. This isn’t, of course, because God doesn’t want to be known by us or satisfy us in the way the Scriptures often describe, but because we are encouraged to embrace our incompleteness by leaning forward into the infinite grace and love of God.

It turns out that, in the light of the Lenten tensions I’ve wrestled with, words like, “Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart,” (Jeremiah 29:13) are not so straightforward. There is no obvious or simple method that can be recommended for seeking God. It really isn’t Hide and Seek. Instead, in the messy and complicated stuff of life, we might bring ourselves to the God who is always close by, opening ourselves to God’s presence in all our very human frailties.

Questions for reflection:

What has your experience of Lent been like up to this point in your life?

Do you find Christian life to be mostly simple or sometimes complicated? Why?

How does the idea that tension could be a gift of Lent strike you?

In what ways are you currently seeking God? How do you know?