Looking For Love

 One of the most exasperating things a mother has to deal with is a bored child--whiny, petulant, rejecting every suggestion for entertainment. My Aunt Till found one game that never failed to bring smiles: hide the thimble. My cousin Jackie and I would close our eyes and she would hide her thimble somewhere in the room, in plain sight, but so small it kept us occupied for a long while, searching.

As we grew older, there were other searching games: hide and seek or Easter egg hunts. Approaching adulthood, there were scavenger hunts. Hunting for a goal is a lifelong occupation, although what we search for becomes more complex, more elusive, looking for something to satisfy our longing for happiness, entertainment, pride, popularity, admiration, wealth, power. But nothing keeps us happy for long; there is always something else just beyond our reach, someone else who has more. And nothing satisfies us for long/ 

It's as though we look at life as we once stared into the refrigerator, not knowing what we need, searching for something exciting, new, different, but nothing there attracts us.  Physical hunger isn't satisfied by sweets and snacks; it craves nutrition, protein, to give us strength and brain power to meet our day's challenges. Spiritual hunger can never be satisfied without something that sticks to our spiritual ribs and fortifies us for our day.

There is a country song which describes our dilemma: Looking for love in all the wrong places. True love can be found only by realizing who we really are, neither as good as we believe we are nor as bad as we fear, but actually a spirit created by God to love and serve Him in this life and the next. His love for us never dims, never fails, never leaves us. Follow Him and leave behind all thirst for things of this world and will never left alone to face this very imperfect world. 

How freeing it is to reach the point when ego and temporal cravings fade as you learn you already have what you needed all along: You are a Child of the King and nothing this world has can compare with this.

And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather  boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 1 John 4:9

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.  Psalm 52:8 

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,      Ephesians 2:4

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 1 John 4:16