Waldo, where art thou?

Dearest Readers, I must apologize once again for the infrequency of my blogs. I do hope your week went well even without my ramblings. While I haven't been writing here, I have been researching what to wear for a Halloween costume. The girls on my floor at Biola are all celebrating Halloween together for what is called a GYRAD (Get Your Roommate A Date). This means that every girl is expected to come to this event with a guy, wearing matching costumes.

A friend of mine altruistically agreed to come with me, and then the true adventure began: figuring out what to wear. Seeing as it was my floor's GYRAD, the responsibility of making a decision and finding a costume fell to me. After much deliberation, a drop of inspiration came to me! My friend has a red and white striped shirt, and whenever he wears it, everyone points out how very much he looks like Waldo from the ever-popular Where's Waldo? books. It was perfect! He would be Waldo, and I would be... well, I didn't know who I would be, but at least now we had somewhere to start.

In the interest of finding a match for his costume I decided to do a little research. I went to my school's library catalog and searched for Where's Waldo? books, to no avail. Luckily for me, our library has access to many, many other libraries in the state, so if a student needs a book that another library has, she can order it and within a few days it will be available for her in our library. A very nifty tool. So I looked in the wider catalog and ordered one of the many Waldo books from another library. A few days later it arrived, and as I was checking it out the librarian observed, "You know, you didn't have to order this from another library, we have a few of these books here. They're just not in the catalog."

Waldo had evaded me again. How very fitting that he would be there, but inconveniently difficult to find. Searching through my newfound Waldo book, I had to wonder about the nature of searching. Why are so many great things hidden? In Jeremiah 29:13-14a God told Jeremiah, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you." I cannot say that I understand why some great things, like Waldo, and like God himself, are hidden from us. But I can see that the fact that they are hidden does not at all mean that they are not here, or that we cannot find them. We were made to seek the things that matter, to chase after the heart of God. And when we truly do so, he promises to let us find him. I don't know about you, but I'm going to start searching.

Truly His,
Caroline