“And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJV)

I wasn’t a happy camper this week. I had to replace a cell phone that wasn’t even two years old.

You get these newfangled gadgets, and you expect them to work the way they’re supposed to for as long as they’re supposed to. And when they don’t . . . well, let’s just say I added one more item to the list of extra, unintended, over-the-top-of the-budget expenses for this year.

The phone worked great all weekend—hubby and I went camping, remember. We were in the Allegheny Mountains, where the cell signal plays peek-a-boo—now you have it, now you don’t.

Searching for a signal from a cell tower eats up a lot of battery power. On the way home Sunday, I recharged the cell phone battery using the car charger.

“That’s odd,” I told Dean when we got home. “This took two hours to recharge. It should have taken a half an hour at the most.”

But that wasn’t the only thing odd. In the upper left of the screen, instead of displaying “No Service” or the strength of the signal, it was showing “Searching.” I’d never noticed that before.

It was still searching for a signal the next day—and I can see the top of the nearest cell phone tower from my house (when the trees are bare).

I rebooted the phone several times. A cell phone is like a mini-computer. When something’s not working properly, usually turning it off then back on—called rebooting—will fix the problem.

But, nada. So I did a soft reset. Nothing. I connected with a service technician online and under her tutelage did a hard reset, resetting it to factory specs and wiping out everything on the phone. (Not to worry—my nearly 800 pictures were saved on my computer.)

But the hard reset, which fixes most problems, didn’t work. The phone was still searching for a signal.

Apparently the antenna inside stopped working, and the only way to fix it was to send it away—that is, if it could be fixed.

I got a new phone.

We, too, come equipped with an antenna, but ours searches for the Creator, who, like a cell tower, sends His loving and guiding signals to us constantly.

Sometimes we’re stuck in “searching” mode because we search for the wrong things in the wrong places. We don’t even realize it’s God for whom we’re searching. Sin has corrupted our antenna.

Like a cell phone, until we connect with His signal, we won’t work right, either.

But there’s good news: Our antenna can be fixed.

God promises us in His Word that if we search for Him with all our hearts, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13). That “if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

When we do, He fixes that broken antenna—and we receive His signals loud and clear and strong.

Don’t be stuck in “searching” mode. Get that antenna fixed today.

Thank you, Loving God, that Your signals are always beaming. Help me to keep my antenna in working order so I may receive them and work the way I should. Amen.

Extra tea: Read and meditate on Jeremiah 29:10–14