Searching For the Wrong Things

One part of my stash

Recently, the temperatures went up to 40’s and 50’s and the ice rinks began to melt, which means that soon my hockey games will be limited to playing indoors. It was a sad day in my world, so I went searching once again for hockey pucks now exposed as the snow has begun to melt. Some days searching for pucks I had good days as I found a lot of pucks, and some days I had GREAT days and I collected 55-65 pucks EACH DAY! My office now has around 640 pucks that I have collected over the past 11 months.

I blogged about my obsession to collect pucks last March 2010. See: http://tomoestreich.blogspot.com/2010/03/obsession.html 


Cathy encourages me in my obsessions; she says that it makes me happy to search for them. I told her I am happy because in my mind it is 1968 and I am ten years old once again. Honestly; how could you not be happy taking a walk around a hockey rink just to pick up hockey pucks? I’ve told the children and Cathy that this will be their savings account; something to take care of them after I’m gone. 

Rows of pucks all around my ceiling



While I was driving to take my skates in to get them sharpened after my hockey games today, I thought about all of those pucks sitting in my office. I thought about how I longed to go find “just-one-more-puck” before I left the place where I had been searching. I thought about how much my obsession has shifted over the past twenty years or so.

Twenty or so years ago I would go to parks, downtown streets, and shopping malls searching for something different. I would go looking for people who needed Jesus. I thought to myself; “What if those 640 pucks collected over the past eleven months had been 640 people to whom I had shared the Good News; the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” 

Rows of pucks all around my ceiling

I know that God can use even base things like the hockey pucks to advance His Kingdom. The Apostle Paul wrote; “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Paul also wrote later on in his same letter; “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22). But I don’t want to spend my time searching for the wrong things.

Yes, I have been proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ through preaching, teaching, and writing, but it’s not the same as one-on-one conversation with individuals searching for the truth. Somehow my time has been preoccupied by searching for the wrong things; perhaps time away from what I am really called to do.

As I travel throughout my world, I see a desperate need for hope to contradict the despair that seems to be so rampant in everyday life. People are no longer plagued by guilt, but by hopelessness and despair. I believe that a relationship with Jesus is the answer to this problem. I believe that God's Word, the Bible, gives answers to this lack of hope, and I endeavor to minister using the principles of God's Word.

When Jesus walked this earth, He was constantly pulled from one activity to another; oftentimes healing people along the way. Sometimes this would lead Jesus away from what He knew that He was called to do. His disciples came to Him and said on one occasion; “Everyone is looking for you!”. But Jesus knew that He had come to “seek and save that which was lost”. (Luke 19:10).

Jesus told His disciples that His purpose (besides His death, burial, and resurrection) was to preach to Israel (Mark 1:38), and that He needed to go to the next place where He was called to go. Jesus was One who truly went searching for the right things.

So how about you? Are you spending your time searching for things that are earthly or things that are eternal? 

One of my favorite prayers that turns my heart back to the things of God is a song by Keith Green called “My Eyes Are Dry” Listen to this and let us together once again commit to search for the things of God.

"My Eyes Are Dry" by Keith Green from the album “No Compromise”
   My eyes are dry
   My faith is old
   My heart is hard
   My prayers are cold
   And I know how I ought to be
   Alive to You and dead to me

   But what can be done
   For an old heart like mine
   Soften it up
   With oil and wine
   The oil is You, Your Spirit of love
   Please wash me anew
   With the wine of Your Blood