The Search for What’s Missing

“Honey! I can’t find my car keys!”

“Mom, have you seen my good jeans?”

“Ma, I looked everywhere. I don’t know where that textbook went.”

Every mom has heard these lines. Things go missing and elude their owners.
 In my house, there were two responses to these cries for help:

“How hard did you look?” and

“If I come in there and find it in the first 30 seconds, you owe me an extra chore.”

Effective searching requires effort, time, and focus. You may have to get up off the couch, put down the remote, and move around.

You may have to stop what you’re doing.

You may have to make an investment in the search – your full attention, maybe, or maybe more.

You may have to move things.

As a fire chief in a rural area, my dad has led his share of searches. Lost children, lost hikers, lost seniors, runaway cows. Even a simple search requires a considerable commitment of resources – human, financial, equipment, and time.

But no one questions those costs when a life is involved. We know it’s worth it.

The Christmas story mentions a search.

Wise men from the East searched for a great king they believed had been born because they had invested years studying prophecies and signs.

Their journey to find this infant king involved leaving their everyday lives, probably their families and everyday concerns, and setting out to a foreign land.

It involved a commitment of their time, their resources, and their attention. It involved risk when the reigning king felt threatened by their search.

And it took longer than they imagined.

I think about this sometimes when people tell me about their efforts to find God.

“I tried church a couple of times but it doesn’t work for me.”

“No one else understands the Bible, why should I try?”

“I prayed but God didn’t answer so I’m done trying.”

“Oh, I can never find time to read my Bible every day.”

So often, I hear people say “I can’t find God.” and my question is “How hard have you looked?”


In The Heavenly Man, Chinese house pastor in Communist China, Brother Yun, describes praying and fasting repeatedly for over 100 days in his appeal to God to send him a Bible. Imagine devoting that amount of time and energy into asking for God’s word!

Those of us with easy access to Bibles pass them by all day long and struggle to make time to open them and pray over a single verse. Then we wonder why our story of faith is not marked by the adventures, conversions, and miracles described by Brother Yun.

Let us be challenged, loved ones, by the journey of the wise men. If something is worth finding, it is worth making an investment in the search.

It may take time, money, effort, resources, and attention. It may involve discomfort, changes, and risks. But the prize is Jesus, Creator of the Universe, Savior of humankind and a relationship with the Living God.

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Colossians 1:15-20

Is He worth the effort of a full-out search?


Yes, He is.