What are You looking for?

“What are you looking for?” 

John 1:38

When two of John the Baptist disciples started following Jesus as he walked, Jesus asked, “What are you looking for? What are you searching for? What do you want?”

I wager all of us are looking for something, searching for something, wanting something. The question is if what we are searching for will matter in the perspective of eternity. One hopes that amidst all we go after, some part of our time and effort goes to the quest for truth. 

My family serves in the QC Jail and we know of many inmates who claim to be innocent of the crime they’ve been accused of. One man was accused of rape of a special child and he said he was nowhere near where the mother of the child claimed he was. He told us the mother was asking him for money to withdraw her accusation. If he was guilty of the crime, he was a horribly vile person. If he was telling the truth, the mother was the vile person who did not care that this man’s life was changed forever, and he was little better than an animal in the jail. It turned out that Frank was telling the truth and a friend was able to track down a woman who testified that he was fixing electric fans in her office on the date in question. 

Truth matters terribly in court cases, where matters of life or death are sometimes decided. In one 1966 Time magazine cover, it trumpeted, “Is God dead?” Last March 2017, Time magazine repeated the bold red and black cover, asking, “Is truth dead?” 

Man can’t kill God, and can’t kill the truth no matter how hard we try. We can deceive ourselves as many of us do, about what is really important. But I think the most important pursuit we can have in our short time here on earth is to go after the truth. It’s a matter of life and death.