Kipling's Fever: Seeking God

Rudyard Kipling was once lying seriously ill with typhoid fever, a\u\ in his delirium he talked and talked and mumbled to himself. One morning the nurse leaned over him and said: “Mr. Kipling, what do you want?” He opened his eyes and said feebly: “I want God.”

In the restlessness of your life, in the fever of life’s cares, demands, pleasures, interests, your soul is saying that. If only you would sit down quietly and listen to your own heart you would hear your real self refusing to be deceived, refusing to be suppressed, saying, “I want God.” If the spiritual urge for God within us is not satisfied, the whole of our inner life is out of gear. Your motor car can’t make any progress until you put it in gear, no matter how fast you accelerate your engine.

Until you do this first thing in life, get right with God, all the hurry and activity of your life will never give you happiness, peace with yourself and other people. You remember how Mr. H. G.

Wells put it in the words of Mr. Britling: “Religion is the first and last thing, and until a man has found God, and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end. He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honor. But all these fall into place only with God.”