“Navy blue soccer socks, we know there are eight of you in this house, and yet you have succeeded in eluding our search efforts once again.”
As a mama of sports-obsessed kiddos, approximately 35 percent of my job is looking for uniform parts and pieces. I do not have the necessary training for this level of search and rescue, yet here I am, called up for the job.
But sometimes, what my children cannot find is literally sitting in the middle of their rooms, not even partially hidden by a random library book. There it sits. Right there. Taunting me after I’ve exhausted looking in all the hard places.
In Jeremiah, God says that His people had: “forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).
Like me and the missing socks, they were digging for something they knew they needed. And they, too, weren’t looking in the right places. Even though God was right there, out in the open, they overlooked Him as their true source of living water, and instead turned to deeper, harder-to-reach places to be filled.
How often have I done this very thing? How many times have I looked in the wrong places for what I thought I needed? Love. Comfort. Validation. Acceptance.
Even though all of these things wait for me in Christ, right out in the open, I often make it harder than it needs to be. Perhaps I am drawn to desperate searching because it’s action? Because it’s something I can ‘do?’ Or maybe I doubt I’ll find the Living Water? Or I’m so used to the broken cisterns, I don’t even realize how dirty the water is?
I think I’m finally learning that frantic searching and heart-pumping digging is me trying to be God—instead of letting God be God.
Lord, help me to lay down my shovel so that I can better see what is right in front of me.
