No, I’m not talking about my wallet, although it certainly could be the case! This tag line from an old U2 song has become a chorus that continues to haunt me. What do I mean?
It seems as if all of my life I have been looking for something and not finding it. Coming to Christ as a teenager was what I desperately looked for and needed at the time. But the irony is that Jesus hasn’t dampened the longing to keep looking. He has only intensified it.
Sometimes when I walk with Heidi, I feel there is something in the sturdy oak or freshly cut grass calling out to me, something hidden yet very much alive. The same thing happens when I see a streaked rose sunset or a sweeping panorama from a mountaintop. I relish the beauty I see, but there is always a boundary, a block, as if there is something else there I am not allowed to enter, something latent, yet very real.
The same thing can happen in my daily interactions. The ordinary laughter of the moment will turn into a window from which I gaze out into a world of unbounded joy. I want to enter that world, only to find it locked and the vision fading as quickly as it appeared. At other times, conversations can turn into the depths of the heart. As I hear the sadness or pain of others, my empathy becomes tinged with longing. I sense a glory underneath—buried, yet waiting to get out.
Finally, I look at my own life’s work and the journey of my heart over the last 58 years. Yes, there has been so much accomplished, so much transformation. Yet, it all feels like fragments I cannot hold in my hands, unfinished stories waiting for resolution.
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
And then I open the Bible and read this: “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship” (Rom. 8:23). There it is. We groan as we wait. We long as we look. Paul says the longing is normal, the work of the Spirit, and our calling now is to wait. But for so long, I either let the longing become a ravenous hunger that consumed or a buried desire I suppressed. In contrast, all of our lives in Christ are supposed to be one growing ache, washing over us and through us as we eagerly wait for heaven.
When that day comes, the waiting will be over, and I’ll find at last what I have been looking for. It will be better than any of us could have ever imagined.
Yes, come Lord Jesus, come!
