There’s a famous story about Albert Einstein.  After he had immigrated to this country and was living in Princeton, New Jersey, he was traveling by train, when the conductor came around to collect the tickets.  Well Einstein couldn’t find his ticket.  He looked everywhere around him, in his pockets, in his briefcase, under his seat, but he couldn’t find it.  The conductor said, “That’s okay, Dr. Einstein, I know who you are.  I’m sure you bought a ticket.  Don’t worry about it.”  But when the conductor came back a few minutes later, Einstein was still looking for his ticket.  He was down on his hands and knees, looking everywhere, rather frantically.  So the conductor came up to him and said, “Dr. Einstein, I said that that’s okay.  You don’t need to worry about finding your ticket.  I know who you are.”  But Einstein, still searching frantically, said, “Young man, I know who I am, too.  But you don’t understand.  I have to find that ticket because I don’t know where I’m going!” 

Life, not just for Einstein, but for all of us, can be like this.  Sometimes we’re just not sure where we’re going.  We talked about this a bit last week.  Sometimes we’re not even sure what we’re looking for.  I heard of a mother who was sort of disgusted with her little daughter as they walked along Fifth Avenue in New York City around Christmas time, because the little girl wasn’t paying any attention at all to all the pretty Christmas windows.  She kept looking down at the sidewalk in front of her as they walked.  Finally her mother said, “What are you doing, Susie?”  And the little girl said, “I’m looking for something.”  “Well what are you looking for?”  her mother asked.  The little girl said, “I’m looking for something to find.” 

Looking for something to find, that could be the definition of what it means to be alive, that’s the description of what it means to be a human being.  Looking for something to find, looking for something to believe in.  Looking for something or someone who can show us the way. 

There is a poem I love even though I have no idea who the author is.  I heard someone reciting this, another preacher I admire, and I just quickly wrote down the words, because I was so moved by them, by the experience contained in this poem.  The poem goes something like this, “There on the border of boundless ocean, and almost in heaven hovers the gleam.  Not of the sunlight, not of the moonlight, not of the starlight.  Oh, young mariner, down to the haven, call your companions, crowd your canvas, and launch your vessel.  And, ere it vanish over the horizon, follow it, follow the gleam.”  There is something in us that longs to search, to look, there is this desire in us to follow after that which gleams most brightly out there on the horizon, out there just beyond our reach.  But we need someone to go with us on this journey, we need someone to help us and guide us. 

A friend of mine once told me about the time he was in Pittsburgh and trying to find his way around; he was trying to find Kennywood.  He was new in town and he could not find Kennywood.  You know how difficult it is for those who are new to Pittsburgh to find their way around.  This man thought he was on the right road, but he also thought it might be this other road, or maybe both roads eventually ended up there.  He wasn’t really sure, so unlike just about every other man I’ve ever known, including myself, he stopped and asked for directions.  He saw a man who looked like he ought to know where he was, and said, “Excuse me sir, can I ask you?  Does it make any difference which road I take to try to get to Kennywood?”  And this man thought about it a minute and said, “Not to me it doesn’t.” 

I mean, we have to have someone who cares, who cares about us, who cares about our journey, who cares whether or not we reach our destination, whether or not we ever find anything of significance.  Life is just too complicated and unpredictable, it’s too difficult and uncertain, for us to think that we can face it on our own.  We each of us must have some power to sustain us, some power that is beyond us and above us upon which we might lean. 

Those of you who like to read stories or watch movies may be familiar with a novelist and essayist by the name of Jacquelyn Mitchard.  She wrote a novel a few years ago with the title “The Deep End of the Ocean” that immediately became a bestseller and was then turned into a movie.  I think it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.  And when she was writing it, and struggling, and thinking she would never make it, she would never finish it and never get it published, she would never be a true writer, in addition to all this, her husband became seriously ill with cancer.  And it became clear pretty quickly that he was not going to get over this, he was not going to get better.  And as I can only imagine, it was a terrible time for both of them, and for their children, as she tried to take care of her dying husband and as she tried also to continue her writing. 

One night things just fell apart, and she just broke down and was inconsolable, sobbing to her husband who was so deathly sick, how she just couldn’t take it any more, how she would miss him, and how she was never going to be a writer, and how she just wouldn’t be able to make it without him.  And her husband who had somehow managed to stay pretty calm throughout his illness, and he was calm that might even as she was hysterical, he said to her very gently, “Listen, it’s going to be okay.  It’s going to be okay.  I know you’re going to miss me.  I know it’s not going to be easy.  But in two years’ time [he said this with some conviction], in two years’ time, you will be a published novelist, you will be a writer of merit.  But you have to believe in it the way I believe in you.”  You have to believe in it the way I believe in you. 

Now I know that this story may be difficult for some of you to hear, because perhaps of some experience you yourself have had, but two years later, her husband had died, life had been difficult, there were times when she was just sure she would not make it, but two years later, almost to the day, she was sitting down at her desk making the final revisions to her novel that would soon be published, she didn’t know this yet but it would soon be a bestseller, “The Deep End of the Ocean”, it would eventually be made into a movie.  And she thought of those words of her husband, actually she’d thought of them every day, she would never forget them, “You have to believe in it the way I believe in you.” 

And I think that I can almost hear Jesus whispering these words, or something like them, to Nicodemus.  I think that I can just almost hear Jesus whispering this to each one of us here, in our own unique circumstances, whispering to you and me, “You have to believe in it the way I believe in you.”  You have to believe in God, you have to believe in heaven, this may be the way some of us might understand this passage; you have to believe in eternal life.  You have to believe, in other words, that God is part of your life right now, that God can make a difference in who you are right this minute.  This phrase “eternal life” in Greek is not really a reference to the quantity of years you might live in heaven after you die.  When you see the words “eternal life” in the Bible, it’s primarily referring to the change in the quality of your life; you could be experiencing a change in the quality of your life right now.  But you have to believe.  You have to believe that your life can have some meaning, some purpose, some direction, some sense of destiny.  You have to believe that God will be there, that he is there for you in your time of need.  You have to believe in it the way God believes in you.

I heard of a young man who because of an accident became blind.  And knowing he would never see again, he had a mixture of emotions, he felt angry and bitter, he felt hopeless, he felt fear, fear over what would happen to him; what would his future be?  And this fear and hopelessness paralyzed him, he just couldn’t do much of anything; he sat around pitying himself.  One day his father had had enough of this pity party and, before he left for work, he told his son that winter was coming and he needed to put the storm windows up.  “Do the windows before I get home or else,” he said.  Well, the young man muttered and complained, he groped his way out to the garage, and found the windows and stepladder, and tools, and he went to work.  “They’ll be sorry when I fall off this ladder and break my neck,” he said to himself.  But you know what?  He didn’t fall.  Little by little he inched his way around the house and did the work and finished the job.  And it began to dawn on him that he could still do something productive, his life was valuable, and he began finally to reconstruct things in his life.  He also learned later, that at no point during that day, all the time he was doing this work, at no time had his father been more than four or five feet away from his side.  His father, and in this I see an image of God, his father had been there the whole time. 

I remember an old preacher saying to me once, “I could write volumes about how to find what you’re looking for, I could write volumes.  But I’ll save myself a bunch of writing, and I’ll save you a bunch of reading by just telling you this: Just set aside a few minutes a day, ten minutes maybe, or five, or even two minutes, two minutes a day, and think about God, think about Jesus Christ and what he has done for you, and confess your sins, some days you may need more than two minutes, but confess your sins, and pray for those who are in need, and pray for those who have done you wrong, pray for those who have done you wrong, and ask for strength for the day, don’t worry about yesterday, or tomorrow, ask for strength, ask for what you need, for the day.  And if you do this, if you do this consistently, day after day, before long, you will begin to find what you’re looking for.