Eureka! Have you got what you are looking for?

In every culture, we all remember as little kids playing "hide and seek".  Being able to locate the hidden member brought a sense of wonder and immense pleasure to the heart of the seeker, and the game continued without getting tired of doing it all over again.  As a father, I used to play this game with my son from the time he was a toddler; every time he found me under the blanket or behind the door, he would laugh his heart out; I could see a great sense of joy in finding what he was looking for.  I wish life was as simple as like that toddler finding his half hidden father behind the door or under the blanket so that, as often as possible, we would throw our hands up in the air and laugh our hearts out with a sense of accomplishment in finding what we were looking for.  The game of "seeking" continues in the adult life; even though we often do not know what or who we are looking for.  Some of us spend a life-time of seeking and still remain empty-handed, disappointed but unwilling to end the game, knowing that there lies an elusive object of our search in which we peg our hopes of finding happiness and final accomplishment. 

When I first read the New Testament, the first verse that stuck to my mind was Matthew 7:7 in which Jesus says "seek and ye shall find".  I was 17 and nearly all my conscious life up until that time, I had spent in seeking something.  I remember seeking it in the Hindu Holy books, in the temples, in the holy places in India, and in the starry night sky of my remote part of Nepal where you could count the stars; they felt so close and so real as if a voice from them would bring me the answer to my deepest longing - who am I, where have I come from, why am I here, and what is my end?  These were not philosophical questions of a person who had become weary of life; these were existential questions of a boy who never knew his parents until the age of 11; these were questions ingrained in my psyche from the day I became conscious of my existence.  But by 17, I had decided to end my quest; I was ready to end the game, but something kept me alive, a something that Tolstoy also did not know as why he did not end his life;

I was happy, yet I hid away a cord to avoid being tempted to hang myself by it to one of the pegs between the cupboards of my study where I undressed alone every evening, and ceased carrying a gun because it offered too easy a way of getting rid of life.  I knew not what I wanted, I was afraid of life; I shrank from it, and yet there was something I hoped for from life. 

At the age of 18, Tolstoy became skeptical of everything he learnt as a Christian. In his Confession he says; “Every time I tried to display my innermost desires-a wish to be morally good-I was met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to base desires I was praised and encouraged.” Tolstoy gave in to all kinds of immoral life.  The more immoral and filthy he became, the more people around him gave him the company and praised him.  Such an irrational praise of an immoral person finally got to him and began to suspect the very kind of life he was living; he found his soul within himself protesting the kind of company he was in and the kind of life he was living.  This inner quest for truth and meaning hunted him so much that he began to envy the peasants whose lives were filled with all kinds of hardships and sorrows but they lived life without fear; to them, life was not wearisome whereas the rich and famous found no meaning in life.  For the peasants, when time came for them to leave this world, they would do it with tranquility and an assurance of surety that Tolstoy could not comprehend.  Eventually, he discovered the reason for such a tranquil life of the peasants compared to the strife ridden life of the counts and noblemen; the difference was, the peasants had faith in God whereas the rich and the famous believed in themselves or in their wealth and power.  That was the turning point for this man whose last audible words are believed to be "To seek, always to seek".  Ever since he came to his senses, biblically speaking, he lived his life with the quest of seeking the "Kingdom of God within".  His view of God and Bible were not accepted by the church; and duly got excommunicated, but he was a man who spent his life searching this God without whom he said, it is not possible for human to live.  In the Kingdom of God is Within You, he says;

Let a man only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, let him understand, that is, that his life belongs to not to him--not to his own individuality, nor to his family, nor to the state--but to him who has sent him into the world, and let him once understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of his own individuality, nor his family, nor of the state, but the infinite law of him from whom he has come; and he will not only feel himself absolutely free from every human power, but will even cease to regard such power as at all able to hamper anyone.

After seeking power and passion throughout the better part of his life; Tolstoy finally found what he was looking for.  At the age of 82, he renounced the material life and the strife ridden family behind and went on a quest for solitude so that he would be united with the one he had finally found.  And in so a fitting way, after two months of leaving home, his earthly journey came to an end in a rural railway station. 

When I first read Matthew 7:7, again it ignited in me a desire to seek that which I didn't know, and coming to the gospel of Luke 15, I began to see a different Jesus; a Jesus who was seeking me all along the way.  Finding me was his greatest joy that he would call the angels in heaven to join him in celebration!  Such a revelation of Jesus brought me to tears and finally to my knees; he made his way into my barren heart, filled me with his love and compassion so deep that all my questing came to a grinding halt.  Like a little toddler, I laughed alone in the jungle where I had gone to surrender my life to Christ; like Archimedes running out of the bath tub naked into the streets of Syracuse, I wanted to jump in the streets of Dhangadi shouting "Eureka", but decided to keep it all in my heart and chose to talk to the trees about my new found life in Christ.  After several months of excitement, I finally mustered my faith to tell about this Jesus to my co-teachers and students of the school where I was teaching and rightly was expelled from that school for doing that.  Losing that job was no big deal, this was one of the greatest discoveries of my life and I had to tell it to as many as I could!   Only after I found him did I know that all along I was looking for him and him alone because nothing else could have satisfied me so fully and so completely.  It is now almost 30 years and the excitement has only increased; nothing excites me more than telling to People who Jesus is and what he can do for them.

Looking at people's life today, I see in their faces a similar kind of quest.  They hide their quest behind humor, knowledge, wealth, fame, power and pure absurdities; but the inner quest goes on.  Like Tolstoy, they think that having power and fulfilling their passions would somehow bring fulfillment but they find, as he found, that this only makes them emptier.  In the most lonesome moment of life, there is no one or nothing on which they can lean and like many, including Tolstoy, they would be tempted to look for the rope or a gun; and some manage to do it anyway.  But for those of us who have managed to survive, we can testify from experience and revelation that there is no hope apart from Christ.   Therefore, as the prophet Isaiah said, "Seek him while he may be found"; it is my desire that the reader would turn to Jesus and find what life really is.  There may come a time when it will be impossible to seek him and thereby forfeit this amazing life. But so long as you are alive, it is time to seek him if you have not found.

However, seeking does not come to an end in a different sense; in the sense in which Tolstoy went to seek at the age of 82; not because he had not found but because he had found the one he was looking for.  This is the kind of seeking Jesus meant in Matthew 6:33; it’s a seeking in which we discover what life in Christ is really like; it is the kind of life that is absolutely free; free from the control of any power or the properties of this world; "You will know the truth and truth will set you free"!