Jeremiah 29:13 NIV: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”
This art piece was inspired by our Pastor’s sermon last week. He used this verse as the central verse for teaching about belief in God. I was initially struck by the effort equated to finding God. The word at the beginning of the verse used for seek is baqash, which means to search out and strive after, ask, beg, desire. Does it really require a lot of work to find God? Isn’t he all around us and in us?
This finding must be more than just acquiring knowledge about God or seeing evidence of God in your life because those things don’t take much work.
There is a second use of the word seek in this verse that comes from a different Hebrew word. The word is darash and literally means to tread wheat, or beat a path. Inherent to the meaning is a repeated, diligent searching. Notice this type of searching is done with all of one’s heart. When this phrase is used in scripture it refers not just to emotions, but our thoughts, desires, and motives as well.
You begin to see that when our whole being consistently digs and searches for God, we WILL find him. By finding him, I mean KNOW him. We will connect with the powerful realization that God is the missing piece. In Him, we find satisfaction, healing, peace, purpose, intimacy, assurance… and on and on the list can go.
What about the hard work part? Why must we repeatedly beat a path, knock down the wheat, and dig into the soil? Because we keep getting preoccupied by other fillers. We use our whole hearts to search for happiness in activities, honors, financial security, relationships, intellectual pursuits, and distractions. For a time, all of these might feel like we finally “found it,” but they all will fall short.
Finding God is no more work than the work we already do in all of our other pursuits. We just need to direct that work to the right spot.
As a final meditation on this piece, what are some of the holes you’ve spent time digging for in the past that didn’t end up satisfying your soul?
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