There is a saying that seems to me to speak to us today: God does not let himself be found by those who put him to the test, that is to say, he does not allow himself to be found by those who wish to conduct experiments on him. This truth was already known in the Hellenistic world, and it hits its mark right up to today. If we want to, so to speak, test God are you there or not? and undertake certain things to which we think he must either react or not react, if we make him the object, so to speak, of our experiment, then we have set off in a direction that will not lead us to find him. God is not prepared to submit to experiments. He is not a thing we can hold in our handGod is just not something we could ever force to call out at given moments: Oh, here I am. God is found precisely when we do not subject him to the criteria of falsification used by modern experiments and existential proof, but when we regard him as God. And to look on him as being God means to stand in a quite different relation to him.

I can actively and methodically investigate material things; I can subject them to my control, because they are inferior to me. But even another person is beyond my understanding if I treat him in this way. On the contrary, I only come to know something of him when I begin to put myself in his place, to get inside him, by some kind of sympathy.

This is more than ever true of God. I can only begin to see God by setting aside this attitude of domination. In its place I have to develop an attitude of availability, of opening myself, of searching. I must be ready to wait in all humility-and to allow him to show himself in the manner he chooses, not as I would like him to do it.