You have said, “Seek my face. “My heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”
Psalm 27:8 ESV
I mentioned in my post The Interest of Others of the day my son was born. That little baby has grown over these past few months to be an alert, slightly nosy, little baby! He is interested in everything! I will sit him in his bouncer seat (which he loves!) then walk around, completing various tasks that I can’t do with a baby in my arms. One of my favorite things is that amidst his bouncing and waving of his arms and legs, he keeps an eye on me. I’ll walk around behind him and I’ll see him looking, a bit like an owl trying to swivel his head, to see where I have gone. I’ll stick my head over the top of the bouncer and he cranes his head back looking at me, then breaks into one of those gorgeous baby smiles as he spots me!
This is quite a switch for me—I believe I have mentioned that I have cats? Well, the thing about cats is they kind of don’t care about you… I know that sounds harsh and I definitely don’t mean to be disparaging to the cat population but (at least my cats) fully believe that we humans were put on this earth to please them. When they want to be petted—we better be available. When they desire to curl up next to us, we must remain seated until they decide it’s okay for us to move. When we walk around, our cats cannot be bothered to wonder where we are going or what we are doing, unless they hear the treat bag or food-can rattle!
This reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. There they were in a perfect paradise, truly not knowing how great they had it when they blew it—they ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked. Suddenly they knew right and wrong. And they knew that they had sinned. So what did they do? They tried to hide from God. They made clothes out of leaves and then tried to stay away from God. But God came looking anyway. He asked where they were. God sought them out. The creator of the universe cared about these little creatures He had made and who existed to love and serve Him.
As a whole, we act a lot more like my cats than my son when it comes to how we treat God. We act largely unconcerned about His whereabouts until we need something, then we come slinking up to Him, asking for whatever we find ourselves needing at that time.
How much better if we were to act as little children as Jesus commands us to in Matthew 18:3 where He says, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”(NKJV) Just as my son keeps an eye on me at all times, smiling when I talk to him face to face, how rich and fulfilled our lives would be if we kept our eyes always trained on Him, craning our necks when He seems just out of reach, and taking time to invest in our relationship with Him.