The Search

‘We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and that we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives. ‘ Curt Thompson

The Search

The Search

We are all born into the world

looking for someone

looking for us. 

And we remain,

for the rest of our lives,

in this sacred mode of searching.

A gaze

that welcomes,

a face

that does not turn away—

this is the soul’s first question.

We seek it in lullabies,

in playgrounds,

in lovers' eyes,

and later,

in glowing screens,

careers,

causes,

cathedrals.

But still, the ache.

Even in an age

where the sky is closed,

and silence

is mistaken for absence,

we thirst.

‘As the deer pants for the streams of water,

so my soul

longs for you,

O God.’

But who taught us to forget the well?

Who whispered

that thirst was a fault,

not a clue?

The madman came to the marketplace,

lamp in hand at noonday,

crying:

"God is dead.

And we have killed him."

The crowd laughed,

but they missed the wound

in his voice.

He wasn’t boasting—

he was grieving.

In the shadow of that cry,

we still search,

haunted not by absence

but by the memory

of Presence.

The world has grown flat,

its maps drawn by one half of a mind,

a mind that measures

but no longer marvels.

Still—

a flicker,

a tremor,

a shadow

moving just beyond the eye.

‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.’

So said Augustine.

So says the body

in sleepless nights

and sudden tears.

In this secular age,

where belief is haunted by doubt

and doubt haunted by longing,

the search has not ended—

it has deepened.

To be human is

to ache,

to reach,

to thirst.

And the thirst itself

is grace.

Rev’d Jon Swales, 2025