Quests are supposed to be about finding something, presumably something of value.  Quests are about finding answers, not creating more questions.   Or are they?  My last quest left me full of unanswered questions and lacking the item I so diligently sought.

Quite unsatisfying if you ask me.  Searching for something that doesn’t exist, or for something that was but now is not.  Is anything permanent anymore?

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.”  (Luke 21:33)

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.”  (Isaiah 40:8)

Man builds his monuments that he might be remembered, while he returns to dust leaving behind his monuments – empty, speechless, unable to tell his tale, when there is no one left to remember who it was that made the monument in the first place.

We toil to make a mark while we are here, to leave a footprint that will endure in our absence, giving evidence that we did indeed pass through this way.  But our footprints fade a little with the passing of each generation, until like footprints in the sand they are completely obliterated by waves and wind, as if they had never been at all.  And when there is no one left to tell the story our footprints once told, no one left who knows our story, no one left to carry our memory in their heart, the erasure is complete.

What then is it that will last?  The things I hang onto or the things I let go?  Is it the skyscrapers, proud monuments to man, that will endure or is it the bridges, lowly paths providing passage to connect us on our journey?  Will it be the things that I accumulated or those things I gave away?

These are all queries of life’s quest, life’s quest to find meaning and purpose amid the mundane.  And each of us is on that particular quest whether we realize it or not.  We may be on our own personal quest for fame or fortune or happiness or love or health or peace or knowledge or understanding or for some rare treasure that we want to possess; but underneath it all, our quest is simply to make sense of the life we are living.  We want answers to life’s questions, that is our quest.  We spend our time dealing with the queries of our quest.

Jesus asked some relevant questions of those He spent time with,  such as, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?  Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”  (Mark 8:36-37)  or “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”  (Matthew 6:27)  or ” ‘But what about you?’ He asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’ ”  (Matthew 16:15)

Jesus asked this last question of Peter, but truthfully He also asks this question of each one of us personally.  And just like Peter, my answer to this question makes all the difference in the world.  An eternal difference.  A truthful answer to this question leads me to a successful conclusion of my life’s quest.  The answer to this question leads me to the answers of all the other queries of my quest.

“Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ ”  (Matthew 16:16)

Jesus said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  (John 8:32)

A quest is a grand adventure and life is definitely a quest – a quest for answers.  So part of questing is questioning, the most important part.  There cannot be a quest without questions.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”  (Matthew 7:7-8)

“Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”  (Jeremiah 33:3)

happy questing my fellow questers!     sincerely,         Grace Day