Seeking Him

“When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You,
‘Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.’”

Psalms 27:8

I find myself most often seeking His hand – I go to Him in need, asking for the blessing of His provision in one form or another. But I think there is another level of seeking Him: that of seeking His face.

When I find that I have discretionary time, usually in the evening, I often feel a deep longing, unsure of what I want or need. I usually cast about trying to decide whether I want to read, watch a movie, talk to someone, or work on a project (I don’t watch TV). But I’ve come to realize that the ache is put there by God Himself – it’s His call to me for relationship: to seek His face. And when I respond to that call, my prayers are very different. I say something like: “Lord, I’m not here because I want or need something from You. I just need YOU.” I don’t always know if what I ask for is according to His will, but I’ve found that this is one request I can be sure of – He wants to give me more of Himself.

Frederick Buechner says it this way in The Magnificent Defeat: “Then Jesus adds, ‘For every one who asks receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened.’…It may not be the kind of answer that we want – the kind of stopgap peace, the kind of easy security, the kind of end to loneliness that we are apt to pray for….Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself. If we go to him for anything else, he may send us away empty, or he may not. But if we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all our longings filled.”