Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
And your labor for that which does not satisfy?
(Isaiah 55:2 RSV)
THE GREAT TRAGEDY OF HUMAN LIFE IS THAT WE DO NOT SEE HOW MUCH MORE WE NEED. God has made us such that we have an inescapable need for perfect, unmitigated, consummate fellowship with Him. That need cannot be filled in this life, even in Christ, and our tragedy is that we do not see how much more we need.
Foolishly, we spend great amounts of time, money, and energy pursuing satisfactions that, while good in themselves, having been created by God, were never meant to satisfy our deepest longings perfectly. We drink deeply of the creation and suppose that our thirst for the Creator has been satisfied. But it hasn’t.
If we’re honest, we see that we have longings that are not only not being filled in this world, but cannot be, even in the fullness of fellowship with God, as sweet as that may be. And those longings are perhaps our greatest clue to the existence of something more. C. S. Lewis said it well: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” That being true, contentment with what is ours right now is the absolute worst thing that could happen to us. We were made for nothing less than what Adam and Eve had in Eden, and we’d better never forget it.
So let there not be a day during our sojourn that we do not reach forward. Not even the blessed joys of home and family should be wholly satisfying to us. Not even the treasures of membership in the Lord’s church should satisfy our hunger and thirst. This world is irreparably broken, and not even the Lord Himself could be anything other than a Man of Sorrows while He lived here. We were made for a joy that simply cannot be experienced in our present environment. So may we never delude ourselves into thinking that what we have right now, even in Christ, is all that our hearts need. God has for His people something much, much more. We dare not, we cannot, we simply must not forget that true fact.
Whatever you love,
Whatever you give,
Whatever you think you need to live,
There’s something more than this.
(Julie Flanders & Emil Adler)
Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com
