Looking for Jesus Without Ceasing

How the simple decision to keep following Jesus, despite my doubts and questions, has made all the difference.

For me, it’s when I walk through a doorway.

That’s when I tend to stop in my tracks and ask that deeply reflective, soul-searching question…

“What did I come into this room to do?”

This is called the “boundary effect” or “doorway effect,” and researchers think it’s related to our mind’s filing system. Crossing a physical boundary triggers our brains to believe something has now been done and can be crossed off our to-do list.

Personally, I think I fall prey to the boundary effect in bigger ways in my life than remembering I was looking for scissors.

For me, the major events of 2020 were like walking through a series of doorways with no time to assess our changed environment between them. The changes (and losses) just kept coming.

And on the other side of each door we stepped through, I looked back with a growing disillusionment with my own set of assumptions about the world.

In my personal life, stepping away from the church we’d spent a decade planting was perhaps one of the biggest doors I’ve ever walked through.

On the other side of this door, life reminded me of the scene in Beetlejuice in which Adam and Barbara learn the hard way about being confined to their home. Stepping across the threshold in an attempt to leave dumped them into a scary desert where a giant worm was trying to eat them, and time passed more quickly.

Our Pastor, in her Easter Sunday sermon, talked about the “mini-deaths” we experience in life, and my mind immediately recalled the pain of that first year of post-vocational ministry life.

The crisis of identity I went through in that year was intense, and I was trying to navigate it all while burned out and depleted mentally and emotionally.

In some of my darker moments when the clouds of doubt have swirled, I’ve fixated on finding proof that would either turn my faith into certainty, or at least disprove my beliefs so I could stop trying to hang onto faith.

That difficult season taught me an important lesson: Faith and certainty aren’t the same thing. In fact, they aren’t on the same end of the spectrum of belief at all - they’re polar opposites. Certainty makes faith irrelevant.

At some point during those wilderness wanderings, I made a simple decision to keep following Jesus, despite my doubts and questions.

I don’t have all the answers today, and I try to conclude my opinions with the disclaimer, “but I could be wrong.” I’m not certain about much, but I’m learning to welcome and even love the mysterious nature and ways of God.

I can tell you from my own painful experience that you usually won’t find Jesus by searching for proof of him. That is, you don’t get to know him personally by analyzing him academically. You’ll wind up knowing more about Jesus than you did before, but you can only get to know Jesus by seeking him, and seeking him on his terms.

The question is, how will I know I’ve encountered Jesus?

On the eve of his departure from this life, Pope Francis’ Easter 2025 Homily was delivered by Cardinal Angelo Comastri. In his message was this reminder:

We must look for him without ceasing. Because if he has risen from the dead, then he is present everywhere, he dwells among us, he hides himself and reveals himself even today in the sisters and brothers we meet along the way, in the most ordinary and unpredictable situations of our lives. He is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.

I’ve found deep comfort in these words. Thinking of Jesus “hiding himself” all around us in the form of other people causes me to look at others a little more closely.

When I’m faithfully seeking Jesus, I can see him so much more clearly than when I’m distracted by other pursuits and less-than-worthy searches.

But this isn’t new information. Just consider this portion of the prophecy of Isaiah:

Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. [8] For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. [9] For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

~ Isaiah 55:6-9 NRSV

Or as Pope Francis put it, “we must look for him without ceasing.”