Searching

Friday in the Second Week of Lent

Though my flesh and my heart should waste away,

God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.

Psalm 73:26

I wander from room to room in my house, retracing my steps, looking for my glasses. Clearly I have arrived at that age. I check the top of my head just to make sure I have not made that mistake again. Of course the irony is that I am trying to find my glasses when I can’t see very well. They have to be here somewhere.

In my spiritual life too, I can find myself meandering from place to place searching for a misplaced thought or insight, repeating steps without result because I cannot see. Age is like this. I am less confident, just when I think I would be more. 

This week in lunching with a friend we both struggled to recover the name of someone we know well. “We talk about the wisdom that comes with age,” my friend says, “but what about the aging brain that can no longer locate what it knows?”

I would think that after all these years of spiritual practice, I would be more sure of God, more faithful, my heart more firmly fixed. But I forget my way, am assailed by fears and doubts, reach out for sacred intimacy and find my hands empty. Yet I know the promise—that God is faithful.

I find my glasses the third time I look in the same place. After all, they had to be somewhere. And God is somewhere too. Once again I am called to practice trust. And to remember that all ways belong to God.



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