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The Quest for the Holy By Greer G. Gordon
As people of a technological age, we live in a society that is deeply afraid of the questions that await us in the stillness. The collective myth of our lives is that technology frees us to engage in the more meaningful dimensions of life. Yet, the fast paced, high stress orientation of modern society simply does not allow us to have enough time, in any given day, to do all the things that are requested by our families, friends, and work. No sooner do we respond to one set of demands than another set appears. In our hope to make the most of our lives, we schedule every second. Although we periodically take vacations, our leisure time is as frenetically oriented as our work time. As a result, we return from our vacations even more exhausted than before we left. Our lives are anything but self-reflective and still. We are constantly in motion. Not only do we schedule our own lives, we also schedule the lives of our children, to make certain that they do not miss a single opportunity for enhancing their experience of childhood. Little wonder that children soon become teenagers who are ill equipped to handle the “boring” interludes of life’s slower movements. Generation after generation, the pace quickens. One of the greatest ironies of the current age is that our preoccupation with gathering information is accompanied by an avoidance of the quiet reflection necessary to give meaning to our collected data. In public and private we are besieged by people who either request or pass along information. From a simple machine in our homes, offices, or schools we can access libraries of information on nearly any subject imaginable. And what do we do with all this information? We store it in the expanded memories of our machines and continue our process of acquisition. However, without ever pausing to reflect upon the meaning of this data, the information we have gathered may have no frame of reference and may be meaningless to us. Our high-tech age has simplified the process of knowledge acquisition, but it has created a nightmare for depth-level, integrated understanding. The most significant aspect of the acquisition of knowledge is the question that originally inspired the search. This is certainly the case in the quest for God and the things of God. Without the properly focused question, we can learn many things about God, but we will have absolutely no idea of how to relate to God or how to pursue a genuine relationship with God.
For many people, such questions about God are seen as bad or threatening. We would rather avoid the questions than risk the discovery that what we thought we knew might not be true. Perhaps we avoid asking questions out of a fear that this might be perceived as a sign that we have lost our faith. Still others, children of our humanistic, technological society, may feel embarrassed or put off by spiritual inquiry. Like Ellie Arroway in the movie, Contact, some dismiss religious questions as speculative and irrelevant because there is no possibility of empirical proof. It is unnerving to confront questions that science cannot answer. The fact that we do not know all there is to know about God may leave us open to a level of fear that causes us to retreat from our quest for truth--which is ultimately God. The twentieth-century theologian, Paul Tillich, said that God is “Ultimate Concern” (cf. Dynamics of Faith, 1957, 10); the center of our deepest concerns and questions. If we do not actively seek God as the center of our concerns, we may miss the very opportunity God has placed before us to enter into a real relationship.
Most of us who have been raised in the Christian tradition are afraid to admit there are times when we just are not really sure that God is out there. If we are hesitant to admit our questions about the power and presence of God, it’s because the very thought seems like a betrayal of God. We wonder whether God is really the omniscient, omnipresent One we were taught to expect God to be. Could our notions of God--or even our belief in God at all--have been grounded in error? In this modern age when everything seems up for grabs, it just doesn’t seem reasonable to hold on to beliefs from ancient times. Listening to the wisdom of our elders and assuming that their world is so far removed from our own, we can think of their religious views as either irrelevant and obsolete or incredibly, uniquely graced. Yet, perhaps the sense of the “Ultimate Concern” has not changed all that much over the ages. Indeed, had our ancestors in the faith not asked difficult questions, then no one would have sought, listened to, or passed on to us the manner in which God has made, and continues to make, the Holy known through human history. For “from one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, …so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘in him we live and move and have our being’…” (Acts 17:26-28). Taken from By Greer G. Gordon / Paperback / 116 pages / Dimensions: 5 1/4" x 8" / ISBN: 0819870463
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“From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, …so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him…” (Acts 17:26-27). 
How do we begin our quest for God and the things of God? What questions may help us to recognize and experience the presence of the Composer of our hearts’ symphonies? For many of us the search begins with a feeling of aloneness, or the unsettling thought that if indeed God does exist, it doesn’t necessarily mean that God cares about our human concerns. This common human experience is described in a poignant scene in the stage play, “1776.” In it, John Adams, standing dejected and alone, cries out: “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?” What John Adams expresses, while standing alone in a Philadelphia bell tower, is the profound sense of isolation that can overcome us in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty. During life’s troubling moments, we may wonder if there really is a God. Does God see? Does God hear our cries? Does God know and understand our sorrow and desperation? Will God respond to our pleadings? It is frightening to think of a world with no God, or worse, a world with a God who does not care. 
More often than not our questions and our doubts are the tools God uses to enable us to engage our intellectual powers and come to a better understanding of God and creation. Often, these questions arise in times of personal turmoil and suffering: the death of a loved one, serious illness, financial hardship, or some other crisis that forces us to face our human limitations. Suffering is never something to be sought after or longed for; rather, suffering and distress are simply part of our human reality. Pain, however, can provide an opportunity for spiritual growth. Indeed, growth does not happen without pain, and clear understanding is not possible without some measure of questioning. 
Symphonies of the Heart