Step back a few moments and consider the big picture:
Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them,
“What are you looking for?”
John 1:38a from Sunday’s Gospel
What are you looking for? Do you know, not merely ‘think’ or grab a cliché to respond with? DO you know what you are looking for? And why is everyone—everyone you know—looking, too? They may try to hide it, but behind that mask, they are seeking, too.
If we were just like everything else alive and evolved in our world, this would not be a question. Ants and elephants and whales aren’t looking for anything more than their evolution and environment have provided for. They look for their next meal. They look to providing a next generation. They look to avoid the potholes and dangers around them. But there is no deeper disquiet in their hearts. They have no need to fidget and waste time trying to pin down a restlessness they don’t have. They are; they do things; and they don’t wonder.
Something else, something more, is going on with us. We are alive and evolved in our world. We fit in our environment and we don’t. We are, and we do things, and we do wonder. Merely gazing at a star-lit sky opens a question deep within us. What are we looking for?
This is the question Jesus asks each one of us.
It is an uncomfortable question to live with. Our uncomfortableness with the question is another clue that evolutionarily fitting in with our environment is an insufficient answer. We usually set goals in front of ourselves, hoping the struggle to achieve them and the reward of reaching them will remove the discomfort. So, we strive for an income level, or for a level of recognition in some area, or for knowledge and discovery, or for relational happiness, etc. Even if these are achieved, wondering remains, and within that, the haunting little question… “is that all?”
Jesus speaks directly to some of these less-than-complete “solutions.” Chasing money, he says, will eventually imprison you in your own lifeless safe. Enjoy the applause you get for advertising your civic virtue and high spiritual nature with public gifts, prayers, and penances, because that’s all you are going to get for them. Winning renown with a sword points only to how you will die. And so on.
Your life and everything else, Jesus teaches, is a gift from God. You yourself are a gift. A gift is fulfilled only by being given. Give yourself back to God, acting now as a gift to others. Make your life a giving of thanks even in the face of any difficulties or sufferings. That is what your restless heart is looking for.
For reflection:
Do not mistake “giving your life as a gift” for subservience, or always giving in. How you give your life back to God and how you act now as a gift for others will depend upon the personal gifts you were given by God, your situation in life, and what the Holy Spirit is urging you to do in the various situations that come up in your day. Sometimes that will mean grabbing a mop and cleaning up a mess. Sometimes it will mean calling the one who made the mess to their responsibility to clean it up. (Are they 2 years old, or 12, or 20? for instance). Sometimes it will mean calling someone to face a hard truth. It means integrity in fulfilling our obligations to God and those around us. It will mean carrying our crosses–and the make-up of those crosses will different for different disciples, as we see in the New Testament and the lives of all the others besides ourselves who have been called to be saints. Think about this and how it matches your own life. Are you letting the Lord guide you in this way? Even if He asks you to do something uncomfortable because that might help bring another of His people closer to Him?