Searching
My spirit made diligent search.
Psalm 77:6
When a spacecraft returns from its orbital flight, there is a blackout period of about four minutes when all communications are broken. This is due to the intense heat generated by the spacecraft’s reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.
The Bible teaches that man is in a period of spiritual blackout. Spiritually, he is blind. “We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men” (Isaiah 59:10). “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Spiritually, man is also deaf. “They have ears to hear, and hear not” (Ezekiel 12:2). Jesus went so far as to say, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31).
Spiritually, man is even dead. “Who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1).
All of this means that the communication between God and man is broken. There is a wonderful world of joy, light, harmony, peace, and satisfaction to which millions of persons are blind and deaf, and even dead. They search for serenity, they long for happiness, but they never seem to find it.
Many give up the search and surrender to pessimism. Often their despondency leads to a frantic round of cocktail parties where vast amounts of alcohol are imbibed. Sometimes it leads them to narcotics or illicit sex. It is all part of man’s desperate search to find an escape from the cold realities of a sin-blighted existence. All the while God is there, speaking and beckoning. God is sending forth His message of love, but we must be on the right wavelength. We must be willing to receive His message and then to obey it.
Our Father and our God, renew in my mind’s eye a perfect vision of You. Revive my spiritual hearing so that Yours is the only voice I hear calling me. And release my heart once again from the death grip of spiritual apathy. Show me Your glorious world of joy, light, harmony, and peace that’s available through Christ, my Lord. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).