37 "The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?”And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour."
John 1:37-39
Our Lord's encounter with the first two disciples is highly significant. The more one thinks of His question to them, 'What seek ye?', the more one sees its profundity. It is as if Jesus had said to them, 'What is your heart's need? What are you really after?' This is very penetrating. Do people always know what it is they are looking for? The object of life, what men ask of life - this is a deeper question than we often realise, but in one way or another, we are always asking it. Is it a sense of direction, a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose that we seek? All this is surely implied in our Lord's penetrating question to these two men. In answering as He did, He was not rebuffing them, for it was not a merely curious question that they asked, He was rather saying to them, in effect, what He later said to blind Bartimaeus, 'What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?' And one may be very sure that the way in which Jesus spoke these three words, 'What seek ye?', and the look on His face when He spoke them, must have been full of invitation and encouragement to them. The words in His second reply, 'Come and see', are 'loaded' words. Both of them are used in the Scriptures as symbols and emblems of faith. To 'come’ to Him is to experience His salvation; to 'see’ Him is to pass from darkness into light. What He said therefore to these men was a double invitation to faith. And, we are told in 39, 'they came and saw....and abode'. This is the history of salvation; this is how it happens.