Seen – Part 2: Seeking

Walking through that dark path that night, I felt so confused and disoriented. Something felt off, but I just didn’t know what it was. Tonight I pray. I pray asking you to save my uncle. Tears run down my face as I ask you to save him from this horrible disease. I am not sure how to approach my first prayer, so I found the one thing that points me to you, a bedtime prayer on my bedroom wall. I use this as my guide as well as asking you to save my uncle. I am so afraid that I am going to lose my uncle. My fear becomes a reality the next day. I do not know what to make of this. Is this how it is God? Did you not hear my prayer? You know, I don’t know if I can trust you. Do you have anything to say to me? I can’t hear anything.

In my homeroom at school there is this girl named Lillian. She recently came back from India. She tells us in English class that her family went on a mission trip to India. I do not know what a mission trip is, but I listen intently wanting to know more as she describes helping others. I have a great interest in wanting to help others. There is something about the way that she talks that is hard to describe, but what I see in her I can only describe as joy. I decide at that moment that I want to pay close attention to her and see if I can understand this joy better. No matter what kind of day she has, this joy, it seems to always be there. I am curious now, however I do not ask.

Soon I find myself head over heels for a guy in one of my classes. I notice something about him though, he has this same joy as Lillian has. I ask myself, what is it about these kids that they have so much joy? Where can I find that? It does not take me long to figure it out. I know both of them know God. I ask myself, is this the same God that I asked to save my uncle so many years ago? How can that be? What do they know that I do not know?

I want to know more. I ask the tough questions. I seek with all my heart. I want to know all there is to know. I want to know the answers to all of my hard questions like:

How did this world start? Can science and God co-exist together? Why is there suffering in this world? What happens when we die?

I start with what I know. I know science, so I dig in more. I want to know if God and science can co-exist together. The more I dig, the more I start to see things that point to something more than I can explain. How do you explain that our planet, Earth, just happens to be the right distance from the sun to maintain a habitable temperature? By chance? I start to think that there is more than just chance that this happened. Of course, there are things that I do not know how to explain, but the more and more I seek to find answers the more I start to see more than what I can explain with just science.

I walk on that path again, the dark one. Tonight though, it isn’t as dark as it was that one night. It is a little less cloudy out and I can see a few stars lighting up the path below my feet. When I come to the fork in the path, it seems a bit more clear which way I should go, the one with more light seems safer. I am not sure if I want to walk down that path. How will my family feel if they see me walking down this path? Is this path really the only way to take to safely get to where I need to be? It is hard to know if I should make this choice at this moment. I feel that I do not know enough about the path that is lit better. So I stand and wait hoping that it will become more clear.