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Well, I think exploring God is about
giving up the chase away from God.
Sometimes you can talk about exploring God as though he is static,
sitting far off somewhere and you need to be in some quest to explore him or find him.
Actually I'm probably more with Frances Thompson who wrote a poem
a hundred years ago called "The Hound of Heaven" where
he said he felt God was like a hunting dog. He could hear
his footsteps on the cobblestones behind him. He could feel his breath on
the back of his neck.
He felt that God was much more interested in pursuing him.
In fact, for him to explore God meant to kind of stop running,
to give up the chase, to turn around and to submit.
And I'd say the same thing about encouraging people to explore God.
It's the God who is in pursuit of you
and to explore him is basically to relent,
to abandon yourself. Actually, I think C.S. Lewis described it that way - he said that
coming to God for him was like an unbuckling, is the way he described it. It's like
he unbuckled himself and let himself fall
into the arms of God. So rather than some static God who
invites us to come over, I think God is in pursuit of us.
I think that to explore him is to abandon the chase,
to, to unbuckle oneself and to
abandon oneself into the loving arms of God.