So don’t worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” (Matthew 6:31-33–again)
I am meditating on the connection between the words seek and see; sought and saw. We seek to see. At the end of our lives, what we have seen will be what we sought.
And what we didn’t see, what we didn’t seek.
Are our lives really this simple? This connected—A forward leads to Z; seeking leads to sight?
I think they are. Jesus at least seems to believe so.
And so where we set our sights will define our horizons.
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Our seeking distills into questions.
Here is what the Gentiles seek: “Where will we live? What will we eat? What will we wear?”
Need-focused and earthbound questions. They are also cyclical and do not tend to grow. No sooner is “What will I eat?” answered than it has to be asked again, and in the same way: “Now what will I eat?”
We seek to see. To “see”: to set our eyes upon, to know for ourselves. To understand and more than that, to experience.
When I ask the question, “What will I eat?” I don’t so much want someone to give me the verbal answer “You will eat meat and potatoes for dinner,” or even to understand on an intellectual level what “meat and potatoes” means; I want to experience actual meat, and actual potatoes, physical and tangible. To set my eyes on them, “see” them, and actually eat them, actually experience them.
If we “seek answers,” this is the kind of answers we seek.
Experiential knowing. Mystical experience, if I dare use that word. Direct contact. Open vision. Sight.
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If we want better answers, we should ask better questions.
I am writing this beside the lake. It is a warm, calm, and beautiful day in late May, here in southern Ontario where I live. Nevertheless it has been a hard day for me. I’m not sure why. I asked myself why it was hard—I sought to know.
I chased my thoughts around in circles for a while, looking for answers. Found a few. Knew them on a deeper level. Wasn’t satisfied or helped for all that.
So I changed my question and asked, “Why is this a good day? Why am I having a good day today?”
I found a LOT of answers. Better answers to better questions. Since one of those answers was “Because it’s a beautiful, sunny day,” I decided to throw in the towel on my original plans (which had been sidelined by all that tail-chasing anyway) and come to the lake.
Then I thought I’d bring my typing keyboard and my Bible with me, so I did, and I’m writing by the water. Finding better things.
Food and water and roofs and clothing are good things.
But the kingdom of God is better. The righteousness of God is better. God himself is better.
If I seek these better things, I start by asking better questions.
Not “What will I eat?” but “Who is God?”
Not “What will I wear?” but “Where is God at work right now? If I look closely, where can I see him?”
Not “Where will I sleep?” but “What is the love of God like?”
Jesus indicates we are playing a game that has limits. We are finite. We cannot actually ask, and seek out answers to, all of the questions.
Only some of them.
So pick the best ones.
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We don’t have the time or the emotional energy or the mental capital to chase the kingdom and to chase our needs, so Jesus says go for the better chase, undertake the better hunt, and your Father will look after the needs.
What we seek to see we will see, know, understand, experience.
There’s an alchemy in seeking, because asking better questions doesn’t necessarily mean different actions but it does mean a different experience. Brother Lawrence called this “practicing the presence of God.” He washed dishes to experience God, and he did experience God.
While others just experienced dishes.
I can eat bread and find God, while others eat bread and just find bread.
Bread and wine, communion in the body of Christ—or just bread and wine, crumbs and alcohol.
Snacks or sacraments.
Depends on what you’re seeking.
(This is Part 77 in a series on the Gospel of Matthew, which you can access here. Unless otherwise marked, quotes are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.)
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