So I was traveling for work around Chicago and I got to spend the night at my in-laws place. It was great to see them, and we had a great time catching up and enjoying each others company over some Italian food (my favorite). My mother in law, sister in law and I stayed up late having a conversation about faith and church. We shared bits and pieces from our own church experiences, and about what we were seeing happen in the world of faith around us.

My mother in law has been working as an international flight attendant for twenty years now. In a career where there is a pretty decent amount of turnover for employees, she has been exposed to a lot of different people. In all her time there she said that not until the last few years has she seen a sort of “spiritual seeking” going on amongst her co-workers. At first she thought it was some of the older women who were getting to a place in life where things are a little more settled and they are looking to the future and asking some of those hard life questions. But then she said she has noticed that it was not just her peers, but women (and men) of all ages that have began to engage in this spiritual questioning and conversing.

She made me think about a lot of things. One was why this may be true for her (and many other peoples experiences) that ten and twenty years ago no one would talk about faith or spirituality in many environments, and now it seems so prevalent (is this true for you?). I don’t think her experience is totally unique, she is on to something when she says we are in a time of “spiritual seeking.” People want to find something, something that is real and true to hold on to. Something that can aid them in providing a structure of how to live a life of meaning and purpose, a life that has impact.

I wonder what is different now from ten and twenty years ago… Anything? Nothing? Are we in a new era of spiritual seeking? And if so, where do people turn to fulfill this longing? Has anything satisfied? Anything?… It’s easy to see how this questioning leads into more questioning… There is a beauty to this pondering, my hope is that we as a people will not just stop at the questions, but that they would lead us somewhere tangible. Because we are open minded so that when we find truth we are able to accept it, right? May we be open seekers of truth and those things that are worthy of our lives, and may each question lead us on a ‘quest’ for something more, something that is real and eternal.