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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the desire we have as humans for the transcendent. Those of us who are followers of Christ believe that this longing is for a living relationship with the God who made us. I suppose that since the dawn of human existance, we have stuggled to put into words this feeling of emptyness that we all feel. The 80’s band Extreme, in their power ballad “Hole Hearted” sings: “There’s a hole in my heart that can only be filled by you; and this hole in my heart can’t be filled with the things I do.” Perhaps these fellows (who by the way also gave us the song, “More than Words”) are theologians!
More recently, the Christian rock band Plumb has sung, “There’s a God-shaped hole in all of us.” I love this metaphor. It vividly portrays the fact that we can only be satisfied by the divine and not any attachment to other created things. But maybe the empty hole in the heart thing doesn’t quite adequately describe all that God is. Can God ever really fill us up? (Don’t label me a heretic yet…read on). What I mean is, can we ever really get enough of God. Like when we are hungry, we long to eat food. We eat until we are full and then we stop eating. But can we ever get enough of God? LeRon Shults describes this as “a longing not for the “end” of one’s joyful experience of [God] but a quickening of it–and intensification of the relation to the infinite presence…”
I think this ‘hunger’ for God can never be satiated like my hunger for lasagna or chocolate cake. (And thankfully, God has less fat calories than either)
By the way, I hope to have accomplished getting at least one of the two Extreme songs stuck in your head…
