From JMB sermon on January 22, 2012

“At a critical point in my journey, when I was not at all sure about what to do next and when I was asking the kinds of questions people in their early twenties ask and when I was more confident than I have ever been since that I would finally understand all there was to understand, and that if God was real at all I would find God in my mind, my reading and studying, my mother sent me a poem, one of her favorites she said she thought I might be old enough to appreciate. It is Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven”:

I fled him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled him, down the arches of the years;
I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter . . . 
From those strong feet that followed, followed after.

At the end of that poem, the fleeing is over.

Rise, clasp my hand
And come!
Ah fondest, blindest, weakest
I am He whom thou seekest!

And so, it is God seeking us, as we seek God. And it is in God, the God who comes to us in Jesus Christ, that you and I are at home, safely, securely, forever.

Amen.”

Link to full sermon –

https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2012/012212.html