Personal Blogs

Last evening, my wife and I sat in a small restaurant here in London. At the table beside us was a young tourist, alone. There was something open about her, something quietly searching, and before long we found ourselves in conversation.

It did not take long before the conversation deepened. With a kind of honesty that only strangers sometimes offer, she told us she had never found the love of her life. There was no drama in her voice—just a quiet ache, familiar and human.

In moments like that, words can feel very small. What can one say that does not sound rehearsed or hollow? Almost instinctively, I found myself asking, “Have you prayed to God?”

It is a simple question, but behind it lies something I have come to feel more deeply over time.

When I walk—whether through a park, along a beach, or beneath a winter sky scattered with stars—I cannot escape the sense that I am surrounded by intention. This world does not feel accidental. It bears the marks of a wise and benevolent architect. There is order, beauty, provision—things given not sparingly, but generously.

And if that is so, it leads me to wonder: would a God who crafted such a world make all these provisions, and yet remain distant from the very people capable of noticing them?

There is a quiet reassurance in the words recorded in Acts 17:26–28:

“From one man he made every nation of humanity to live all over the earth… so that they might look for God, somehow reach for him, and find him. Of course, he is never far from any one of us.”

That last phrase lingers—he is never far from any one of us.

Not far. Not hidden beyond reach. Not indifferent.

But there is something else in those words too. We are invited to look, to reach, even—some translations say—to grope for him. There is an honesty in that language. It suggests that faith is not always neat or immediate. Sometimes it is tentative. Sometimes it is searching in partial light.

And yet, the promise remains: he can be found.

Perhaps this is where comfort truly begins—not in having every longing immediately fulfilled, not even in finding the love we hope for when we expect it—but in knowing that we are not alone in our searching.

God is not a distant mechanism, not a prayer wheel to which we attach a request and then forget. There is something more relational, more personal. Seeking him involves a turning of the heart, a willingness to draw closer, to listen, to shape our lives gently in response to what we find.

And maybe, just maybe, in that quiet seeking, we begin to discover a deeper kind of companionship—one that steadies us even in the spaces where human love has not yet arrived.