”Seek first the Kingdom of God” Matthew 6:33
Seek: (verb) to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover. Seek is an action verb.
Navigating to God – when traveling life’s way in an effort to get closer to God. One must use the tools available. The Bible, Prayer, Praise, Community, Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Mercy (Reconciliation) and the Holy Eucharist and the Church. Without these, the soul is destined to get lost and find the way much more difficult, in not impossible.
When I completed aircrew survival school in the USAF, we learned land navigation in both peace and combat situations. The basic premise for both was the same: map reading, compass use, triangulation and distance tracking, aka set counting.
In land navigation as in faith navigation, one must keep their eye on a target. In land navigation, this means that when traveling from point to point, you sight a tree or other prominent object in your path and walk to it. When you get there, you re-align your direction with your compass and map, pick the next object in your path and repeat. This makes distance navigation possible without going around in circles. If you just ‘walk straight’, you’ll get lost. That’s because we naturally have a stronger leg or maybe one slightly longer than the other. Normally, not even noticeable. But, when walking a long distance over terrain, you can literally find yourself walking in a circle.
This method is really critical in a combat situation. If you come to a clearing, one can’t just walk across without making yourself a clearly visible target. So, you come to the clearing, sight along your path, find an object and then skirt around the clearing until you come to your object. Reorient you’re direction and continue.
Triangulation with your compass and map against the terrain is key. I remember in our combat navigation portion, my partner, a lieutenant, and I messed up our step count and walked right passed our destination. Yea, totally embarrassing, especially since he was an F-4 navigator. This ended up causing us to walk an extra 5-6 miles. We noticed something was wrong and went to a high point to get our bearings. We found two high points on our map and triangulated our location with the compass. While we walked a lot more than we were supposed to and actually went out of bounds, we learned a great deal.
The same lessons can be applied when navigating our faith in search of our destination, God.
The soul must never trust itself fully to be able to traverse the distance. We must keep our eyes firmly focused on Jesus Christ as we walk along. We need to maintain a high sense of focus and awareness of our surroundings so we don’t miss the mark. If we get off track, don’t panic. Just get your bearings, using your tools and start back in your direction again.
We are in a combat situation now, the devil is hunting harder for you than the instructors were for the lieutenant and myself in our evasion. We don’t want to make ourselves a target when traversing life to Jesus.
The Bible is our compass, prayer keeps us oriented in the right direction. Praise keeps us energized for the long journey.
We have better companions then a confused F-4 navigator, we have our Guardian Angel, the Saints, the Blessed Mother, our devotions and Mass. Plus, our Commander is better and more caring than even the greatest human general. Jesus loves His troops and won’t allow any to be lost.
You can expect to traverse hills an valleys. Jesus in the highest peak, we can always find our way by just looking toward Him and asking for help (triangulating). Jesus is always the Light in the darkness. And, if you feel yourself getting lost, call out to Him, He’ll find you and bring you back on course. Even, if you’re lost in the ugliest muck of sin, He will pull you out and carry you along while you rest.
“This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.” John 18:9
”While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost“ John 17:12