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Seeking God

August 15, 2012

“This is what the Lord says to Israel: ‘Seek me and live’.” — Amos 5:4

At the end of a graveside service I once attended, I looked around at the various headstones of some of the people who were buried in that particular cemetery. There was one headstone that caught my attention. While many of them were filled with flowery language and all kinds of accomplishments of the deceased, this one simply said, “A Seeker of God.”

“Seek me and live,” says the prophet Amos. The idea expressed by Amos is simply put, but not a simple idea. Amos defines for us what it means to truly live. Living is much more than just staying alive; true living means to spend your days seeking God. Very careful with his words, Amos does not say that one must find God, rather one must seek God. It is in the process of constantly searching and looking for God that we are truly finding Him.

To find God means that He is totally knowable, which of course He isn’t. To find God means that one has arrived at a complete understanding of how God runs the world, which of course is impossible. For me, seeking God means that I am trying my best and I am constantly growing in my relationship with God. I am looking for more. I am not satisfied with where I am today. Seeking is never arriving; it is the daily search for God in every aspect of our lives.

Practically speaking, what does it mean to seek and search for God? If we think about the way that people pursue material things such as money, physical pleasure, comfort and the like, we can get a glimpse into the idea of seeking God. We need to seek God with at least an equal amount of enthusiasm with which we pursue material things.

Just as we regularly spend time earning money, we must regularly spend time studying the word of God. Just as we invest our money in things that make our lives better, we must invest money in things that make us better. We are always learning more about how technology works. How about contemplating how God works? When man seeks pleasure, he is always asking himself how he can raise his standard of living. But when he seeks God, he constantly asks himself how he can elevate his soul.

We don’t seek God because He is lost. We look for God because we are lost. It is in the seeking that we find ourselves.

With prayers for shalom, peace,


Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
President

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