Saturday, August 4, 2012

Our God-Quest

I chose the name Quest Ministries for this website because it brings to light my personal interest and it taps into a need all people express in one way or another.

As I reflect on my experience with God, I realize that I have a strong desire to know God and to be with Him. Some well-known people have described this longing. For example, Saint Augustine wrote in his opening paragraph of Confessions, “. . . you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”

C. S. Lewis wrote prolifically about the longing for heaven, our desire for God. One sample comes from his chapter titled “Heaven” in The Problem of Pain. “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else.” Lewis goes on to describe some of the things that can bring this desire to light for you: favorite books, landscapes, hobbies, and friendships.

Lewis continues by commenting on the object of our desire:
You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

So how do we acknowledge and let our quest for God “work for us”? Responding to that question is the part of what I do as a spiritual director and in my daily interaction people. I am open to talking with you about working together in a spiritual direction relationship. You may contact me via email at s.bohall@verizon.net or by phone at 508-410-9008.

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