Seek and ye shall find? Maybe not. . .

Over the past few days, one message has been hammering away at me - don't obsessively seek and you will find. First it was in church - yes, the pastor did say DON'T seek, and Jesus did say DO seek, but I'll get to that . . . which I've been mulling over, and today, in an email that was forwarded to me, and in the events of my life over the past couple of weeks.

This is a good message for me - because I am an extremely impatient person. I am not really used to getting my own way all the time, but for some reason, when I have consciously gone after something, I want to see the effects of that action right away and sometimes go to great, even embarassing lengths to find them.

So in church, Pastor Tim told us that we shouldn't seek what we want, but rather, something greater than what we desire. "If you seek joy, you won't get joy. But if you seek God, you will get both God and joy. If you seek blessings, you won't get blessings. But if you seek to be righteous, then you will get both righteousness and blessedness."

In other words, if you seek selfishly, you will not get what you are seeking. But if you are selfless, if you look for something greater, something that transcends your smaller desire, that will ultimately have a much larger impact than the selfish thing you are seeking, you will achieve both.

And I realized that I have spent a lot of time seeking that good job, those (seemingly) perfect people in my life and that ever-ellusive perfect happiness. But, if I focus on serving God, a job that will make a difference (or at least not obsess so much about a job, period), and reaching out to people who need me, those things I am tempted to seek will come by themselves.

So what does this have to do with my impatience and need to have and know what I want NOW, NOW and NOW? Well, this need in me, I think, satisfies a small goal - will I get that internship I want? Or will that person I'm waiting to hear from write? Or will that one great connection I have do something to get me a good job? My impatience stems from my need to stay in control of my life, to have no unknown variables. Instead, if I learn to live with the unknowns, and aim for the things mentioned above, then the other things will fall into place.

Or so I hope anyway. . . because it takes a big person and lots of moral discipline to strive for such noble goals. . .