Seekers

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

– High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. [1]

Human beings have always been seekers. We have always been restless. We cannot help but wonder what may be found over the next horizon. New places call to us, and it is in our nature to respond.

So mankind migrated from continent to continent, crossing land bridges on foot, trackless wastes of ice by dog and reindeer sled, and vast oceans by canoe and longship. We learned to navigate by the stars, then realized the air was another realm to be conquered.

Kitty Hawk led to the Sea of Tranquility in less than 70 years. We broke the sound barrier, then what some have called the surly bonds of earth. Now our goal is farther still and we aim at the stars, themselves.

Even exploration on so grand a scale has not satisfied our restless curiosity. The search for something unseen, unknown, has inspired us to investigate the world around us on an atomic level, and the human body on a molecular level.

In the process, we have discovered the relationship between energy and matter, and the relationship between time and space. We have split the atom, and mapped the human genome.

And we have studied ourselves – giving rise to fields from anthropology and sociology to philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry. Still we seek new challenges, new frontiers.

To varying degrees, the journey of exploration is replicated in each human life. We search for identity. We search for connection. We search for meaning and purpose…higher mountains to climb.

All this wandering – this wondering – is not pointless.  This searching has not been in vain. However much it may have benefited mankind, it is reflective of a greater longing.

“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29: 13).

—
[1] John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was a 19 year old World War II pilot serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was killed in an aerial accident 4 months after having written High Flight.

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