What are you looking for? John 1:38 NRSV
One day John the Baptist pointed to Jesus Christ and said, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.” Two of John’s disciples left him that day and immediately began to follow Jesus. When Jesus realized they were walking behind him, he turned and asked them, “What are you looking for?”
That is such a good question.
I can envision these two new disciples with their heads down, each nudging the other to answer Jesus’ question. Finally, one of them says, “Teacher, where are you staying?”
The other guy must have put his face in his hands. What a dumb answer! Why didn’t he say that they were looking for truth, or maybe the kingdom of God?
To be honest, most of the questions I ask God really aren’t very profound either. I would love to impress God with my speculations about the inner dynamics of the Trinity, but I’m not up all night thinking about that. The things that keep me up at night are much more trivial.
Most of us don’t really yearn for world peace. We think world peace is a good idea, but what we are deeply concerned about and think about continually are issues like losing weight or getting our teenagers to talk to us.
The disciple’s question, “Teacher, where are you staying?” was not a serious or deep question. But what’s fascinating is that Jesus took the question seriously and invited the two men to follow him home. There they stayed with him, probably talking about a lot of ordinary things. Apparently the conversation was so ordinary that John didn’t bother recording it in his Gospel. I’m sure Jesus eventually talked about salvation, but he must have spent a lot of time fulfilling the disciples’ ordinary yearnings before he could expose their longings for God.
The important thing is not what they discussed but with whom they were talking. There are no dumb questions with Jesus. There aren’t any smart ones either. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what we are looking for in life. If we turn the search into a prayer, Jesus will use it to reveal more of himself to us. And once we come to see who he is, the other questions will become less important. That means about halfway through our prayers, if we are paying attention, it should not be uncommon for us to say, “Now, what was I asking? I really can’t remember.”
—M. Craig Barnes
Reflection
Do your prayers focus on the things for which you are asking or on the one to whom you are speaking?
Prayer
Keep me praying without ceasing, God, until I come to see that it is for you alone that I really yearn.
“He who prays fervently knows not whether he prays or not, for he is not thinking of the prayer which he makes, but of God, to whom he makes it.” —Francis de Sales, early seventeenth-century devotional writer
Leadership DevotionsCopyright © Tyndale House Publishers.Used by permission.
