December 5, 2003

We live in an interesting age.  Life is such an “all-you-can-eat” buffet in the twenty-first century that we are constantly sampling all sorts of ideas, occupations, material conveniences, and “good causes”.  Off hand, it sounds great.  “I’ll get a bit of this and a bit of that” and we dabble in all sorts of entertaining enterprises, feeling proud of the breadth of our knowledge and experience.

          However, such a smorgasbord can still leave us unfulfilled and spiritually empty (this coming from one to whom an acquaintance referred as the “king of useless information”).  How is it possible that such a broad sampling of so many things can leave one so unsatisfied?

          The answer is simply that the most universal of human needs is the need we have for God.  It happens to be the most important of our needs but is sadly the most neglected.

          Don’t believe me?  Then learn to watch people.  You’ll see folks rushing from one thing to another with hardly any room in their crowded schedules to breathe and not knowing how to cope when one block is knocked down from their fragilely constructed lives.  Others will pour themselves into a cause or vocation only to eventually wonder if they’ve wasted their lives, uncertain suddenly as to any meaning beyond the project at hand.

          When our schedules, our plans and our lives suddenly come to a screeching halt, we are left feeling “starved for something more”.  And then, when we don’t know where to turn for that “more”, we start trying all sorts of things that prove in the end to be loaded with “empty spiritual calories”, giving us only a sense of disappointment and regret.

          The Bible describes a situation like this in Amos 8:11 as “not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.”  It turns out that what we need most in our lives is God!

          Think of it!  You and I were created to walk with God, to hear His voice and to actually know Him intimately!  God intends, if you’ll let Him do it, to fill your life with the sustenance of His joy, His peace and a sense of worth that comes from His love for you!

          The Bible says in Isaiah 55:1-3a, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.  Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?  Listen, listen to Me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.  Give ear and come to Me; hear Me, that your soul may live.”

          God is waiting for each of us to come to Him and get “filled up” on bread that satisfies!

(Thom Mollohan has ministered in southern Ohio the past eight years, is currently the pastor of Pathway Community Church.   He and his wife are the parents of three children.   He may be reached by email at pastorthom@pathwaygallipolis.com).