Acts 17:22-28
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
Paul has been a while in Athens the great city of philosophers, thinkers and discussers. Eventually as they get to know him, they invite him to the Areopagus, their great public lecture hall, to address them about his own faith and philosophy. He talks to them about the one great God of creation who gives life and breath to us all.
I love the description of the essential meaning of life, ‘to search for God, to grope for him and find him’. I find that the more I search for God the more all the big things, such as family, friendship and work etc. seem to fall in to place. Here is a little prayer for you.
Lord God ,
Open my eyes, unstop my ears,
Slow down my business,
Help me to search for you.
To search slowly and diligently,
To wait for you.
Amen.