Questing for God

This summer we are in a sermon series on a wonderful collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. These 15 Psalms (Psalm 120-134) are traditionally thought to have been used by the people of God as they made their way on pilgrimage up to the temple in Jerusalem to worship God during the three great annual festivals. 

But pilgrimage is not just the likely origin of these “songs of ascent.” In the teaching of the early Christian movement—partly because of these psalms—pilgrimage became the way to understand the entirety of the Christian life. In other words, we are to look at life as a quest.

The great Southern writer, Walker Percy, says, “I have learned that the most important difference between people is between those for whom life is a quest and those for whom it is not.” 

But here’s the question: if life is a quest, what is it a quest for? All of us would answer that slightly differently, but what’s fascinating is that there is so much commonality in the great wisdom teachings throughout history. Life has been regarded as a quest for meaning and purpose; for joy and abundance, not mere survival; a quest for truth, goodness, and beauty. 

But for Christians throughout the ages, we say that that quest is ultimately for God. It is in God that we find meaning, purpose, joy, and abundant life. It is in God that we find the true source of truth, goodness, and beauty.

So then, are we on a quest for God? The biblical answer to that is a little bit complicated. On the one hand, yes, we are on a quest for God. In the opening lines of his Confessions, Saint Augustine prays, “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Theologians and hymn writers down through the centuries have written that every heart has in it a God-shaped hole that nothing less than God will satisfy. So all of life and all of our searching for joy, goodness, and beauty is ultimately a search for God.

On the other hand, we’re not questing for God. When we read the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve rebel against God and are exiled from communion with him. And do they then turn around in repentance to seek God and ask for his forgiveness? No, they hide from God in their shame. God is the only source of true joy and abundant life, and yet we so often run in the opposite direction. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “there is no one who seeks God” (Rom 3:11).

But here’s the good news: we are not on a quest for God, but God is on a quest for us. The whole story of the Bible is the story of God who comes to meet us. He not only came down in the tabernacle and the temple of Israel, but ultimately he came to us in Jesus Christ. God’s questing after us is so unstoppable that God himself came to us in the person of his Son. Jesus came to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk 19:10). His quest includes his dying on the cross for us, in our place, and his being raised to give us new life.

So are we questing for God? At one level, yes. At another level, no. But God is questing after you. That’s why life is a pilgrimage. Because of what God has done for us in Jesus, life is a quest—a pilgrimage to our true home. Our true home is not ultimately a place; it’s a person. Our true home is not just heaven; our true home is God.

The Psalms of Ascent teach us how to be pilgrims as we make our own way upward on our journey to know God and to eventually be with him in his kingdom forever. They are songs for the journey.