A Personal Quest

In my haphazard search for “God” — whatever that word means, I prefer the word Creator but that’s a topic for another time — I have found that people who have found God do not need anyone else.

This is especially helpful to people who have lost everyone they ever loved. For them, God is a great source of comfort and companionship on this lonely planet.

I went to the house of an old man whose whole family have died and I asked him, How to do stand living here alone?

I’m not alone, he said, I have God.

I envied him. I could use some of what he’s got. I am doubly isolated, first by the loss of loved ones and then by Covid. I could have asked the old man how he found God and all the rest of it but his way would not be my way, and if there is a secret to it or a shortcut, I’m not interested.

Seeking God is a personal and individual quest. That’s why I would never “find God” at a church service or at an evangelical gathering, for then I would feel like a mindless sheep, caught up in an emotional fervor, following the herd, and it wouldn’t be something I deeply felt — and knew — in my heart.

So I stumble along, feeling my way, a blind man in a thick forest, not expecting to “see” God or hear God or trip over God, for I do not believe God has any corporeal substance. He’s not a man for godsake. He doesn’t have a body and he doesn’t have a walking stick.

But if I make it out of the woods without being jabbed by deadly thorns or bitten by a snake, I will feel someone — or something — helped me through. Maybe.

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