Seeking 2
October 27, 2008
Celtic Daily Prayer begins with a reading from Psalm 27, which is followed by a series of pointed and arresting questions. The question about seeking God with all my mind arrested my attention the other day.
Here is the CDP opening:
One thing I have asked of the Lord,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life;
to behold the beauty of the Lord
and to seek Him in His temple.
Then the call to seek God in the participant is put in relief:
Call: Who is it that you seek?
Response: We seek the Lord our God.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your heart?
Response: Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your soul?
Response: Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your mind?
Response: Amen. Lord, have mercy.
Call: Do you seek Him with all your strength?
Response: Amen. Christ, have mercy.
The pray-ers who graced the Church with CDP felt they could equate seeking with loving (a la Shema). A fine equation it is, I believe. We seek what we love and we love what (whom) we seek.
I know I desire to seek God with all my mind. Yet how can finitness seek infiniteness? How can what is limited seek the Limitless One? Answer: As best one could. Particular seeking is unique to each of us. Some seek by prayer only, others by reading Scripture, others by observing the actions of God in their lives, or by means of other disciplines. Yet all Christ followers are all one in our seeking.
The rational part of us, the things we have come to believe, what we think about, urges, images, impressions, what we know, what we feel, all of them are filtered through and some come to reside in our minds. The mind always seeks to make sense of things. This mind of ours has a lot of control over most of what we do. And one thing we are free to do is to seek God with the mind.
One thing I have to be careful about (how about you?) are things that impress themselves upon my mind, my mind like yours is impressionable. I am discovering that age and past wisdom are no guarantee against the onslaught of impressions. I am thinking it will always be that my mind is susceptible to impressions (even the bad ones) and that seeking God is the antidote.
One of the benefits from practicing sacred rhythm is the shaping of our minds in the likeness of Christ. Engaging in Sacred Rhythm is imitative of Christ’s behavior. It is the one of the means that the Holy Spirit uses to transform our minds. In comparison to the constant bombardment of impressions from evil elements in the world, the short times of punctuated prayers gains in importance. It is in this practice that we bring much needed balance to our minds. In Sacred Rhythm we are letting the holy Spirit through whatsoever is lovely, good, faithful, of good reputation etc… have a go at the renewing of our minds.
The arresting questions of CDP make the all-encompassing subject and object of our lives to be seeking God. It is good that each time our mouth engage in prayer for these questions of life to be foremost in our minds. We are born with a seeking mind, we live by a seeking mind, we hope and anticipate the future with a seeking mind, and we love Him with all our mind.
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“We seek what we love and we love what (whom) we seek.” All the Christians I run with would clearly declare their love for God, yet in my estimation, many of them are not seeking after God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. They are not actively practicing the sorts of spiritual disciplines talked about on this site. I think they might say they want to, but are too busy working, going to soccer games, and making adjustments to their fantasy football team. What might that tell you about these people?
Georges, another great post. I really like the statement that Jamie mentions above: “We seek what we love and we love what (whom) we seek.” I think this is right on, however, as Jamie brings up this is not clearly visible in the lives of most Christians.
I also like your statement: “In Sacred Rhythm we are letting the holy Spirit through whatsoever is lovely, good, faithful, of good reputation etc… have a go at the renewing of our minds.” We must put ourselves in a position for this to happen and cultivating a rhythm is no doubt a viable/crucial opportunity for this to occur.
Jamie, I agree that this is most rare among the church today. “What does it tell us aobut people?” First that they (we) are simply too busy. I struggle many mornings to “get busy” with my daily to do list rather than participating in the daily office. Second, it may tell us much about the church. How often (if ever) do we talk about topics such as these?
Thanks Brad and Jamie.
Isn’t it ironic that we are encouraging the church to seek God? I have read both Richard Foster and D.A. Carson saying to us: The greatest challenge of the Christian church today is to come to know God. We know what they know.
Yet, I pray that we never become those in Jamie’s circle who say they love but seek not in every way God allows us to seek him.