Have you ever had one moment in life that changed your entire life? Today, let's zoom in on one moment in the life of St. Andrew where two questions changed his entire life. Andrew was a follower of John the Baptist, and he was there to witness Jesus arriving on the scene to be baptized. John the Baptist said of Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God" (John 1:36). St. Andrew heard this and felt something deep in his heart, and he decided to follow Jesus. I imagine him making a hasty goodbye and receiving John's blessing as he took off down the path to follow the man he hoped was the promised Messiah.
John 1:38 captures the moment when Andrew caught up to Jesus. Jesus turns to Andrew and says, "What do you seek?" Instead of answering directly, Andrew answers with a question saying, "Where are you staying?" Jesus responds, "Come and see." These two questions changed Andrew's life, and they can change our lives as well.
What do you Seek?
If Jesus stopped you today and asked you, "What are you seeking?" or it could be translated, "Whom are you seeking?" How would you answer Him? I think that if you had a pen and paper and had to write an answer to that question, you could write quite a bit, and the things you wrote would reveal a lot about the longings and hurts you carry deep inside. St. Innocent of Alaska said that everyone is seeking happiness. He wrote:
Every individual instinctively strives for happiness. This desire has been implanted in our nature by the Creator Himself, and therefore it is not sinful. But it is important to understand that in this temporary life it is impossible to find full happiness, because that comes from God and cannot be attained without Him. Only He, who is the ultimate Good and the source of all good, can quench our thirst for happiness.
There is something within us that resists finding our happiness in God. We are like Adam and Eve who tried to find wisdom and pleasure on their own apart from God. A beautiful little book called The Last Addiction by Sharon Hersh, is about this. She writes that the last addiction that everyone struggles with is the addiction to making life work on our own. It's thinking that we can make life work without God instead of surrendering to God and being united to Him. She writes:
Without surrender, we get caught in an impasse between high arrogance and low self- esteem...High arrogance makes us believe that we can handle things, that others can't be trusted, and that we do a better job of managing our lives than God does. Low self-esteem leads us to believe that we must handle things, because we'd be a burden to others or become unlovable if we revealed all of our baggage, and that even God eventually gets tired of our constant neediness" (p. 67).
Very few people would answer the question, "What are you seeking?" by saying, "I'm seeking to be happy and make my life work without God," but we all find ourselves there
sometimes. St. Andrew revealed what he was seeking through his question. He was saying, "Lord Jesus, I am seeking to be with you wherever you are." We often need to ask, "Where are you Jesus?" and we need to go where He is.
Where are you Staying?
St. Andrew asked Jesus where He was staying because he wanted to stay with Jesus. I think today after Jesus asks you, "What are you seeking?" St. Andrew would like to wave you down and ask you, "Where are you staying?" There are a lot of ways to answer this question. Some people stay in their difficult emotions like anger, fear, and shame. Some stay in their challenging circumstances like an illness, relationship, or job.
I think St. Andrew would tell us that no matter what you are feeling or going through in life, as a Christian, you can stay in Christ. The phrase, "in Christ," or phrases similar to it occur almost 150 times in the New Testament. Living our lives in Christ, is where we are meant to stay. In her book, God's Path to Sanity, Dee Pennock says this in a similar way. She writes that when you are baptized, "God becomes your environment."
If God is our environment, we can respond to, "What are you seeking?" with Psalm 73 and say, "Whom have I in heaven but You, Lord, and on earth I desire nothing more than you." We can respond to, "Where are you staying," with Psalm 84, and say, "One day in God's presence is better than a thousand days anywhere else." This is what St. Andrew discovered, and he prays that we will discover it as well. May we all pray together this prayer from St. Porphyrios, "Jesus, there is one thing I want, one thing I desire, one thing I ask for, and that is to be with You, wherever and however You wish" (Wounded by Love p. 98).
 Originally published in the Holy Apostles E-bulletin. Subscribe here.
