Wednesday 21 July 2010

I don't think we were created to chase fleeting pleasures, broken relationships, and cheap flings...

People will spend their whole lives exploring the meaning of such questions: Why am I here? How can I give my life more fulfilment? How can I cram it with more wholesome experiences? Why is it that each new pursuit always leaves me feeling empty after a little while?

It is so easy to look around us and notice others who have something in their lives that at that exact moment fills their lives with more meaning. It might be a new car. The birth of a child. A promotion at work. The expectation of a particularly luxurious holiday. As one experience or instance passes though, we scrabble around searching for a different fix, the latest high or the newest trend in culture. How long will it take us to realise that these transient ‘life-fillers’ are capped. They have a ceiling; an expiration date; a restriction that leaves them clipped and causing us to want more.


In the Bible, Jesus informs us that ‘the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it’ (Matt 7 v14: NLT). The gateway to a ‘purpose-filled’ life that the world offers is wide; most find it. And most finish it feeling dissatisfied with a sense of disappointment and a hunger for something more.

But this path, this gateway that Jesus refers to in this gospel brings freedom. Some might say that this ‘relationship’ the Creator calls His created into, brings restrictions. That it binds up and domesticates. That it saps the fun out of living by pressing rules against everything. I used to think that too. I used to think that if I pursued Jesus then my identity would be stifled; that I’d be held back and constrained from experiencing life to the full while I was still young and single.

I was wrong

We are all dead people walking until God intervenes. We think we have life to full before that, but we truly do not. We all think we know how best to live life but there’s only one who does. Don’t lose out on discovering God just because you think you already know the answer as to why you are here.