There's much more meaning
in life once you know your purpose. Consider a hammer. It's designed to hit nails.
That's what it was created to do.
Now imagine that the
hammer never gets used. It just sits in the toolbox. The hammer doesn't care. But now
imagine that same hammer with a soul, a self-consciousness.
Days and days go by with
him remaining in the toolbox. He feels funny inside, but he's not sure exactly
why. Something
is missing, but he doesn't know what it is.
Then one day someone pulls
him out of the toolbox and uses him to break some branches for the fireplace. The
hammer is exhilarated. Being held, being wielded, hitting the branches -- the
hammer loves it. At the end of the day, though, he is still unfulfilled.
Hitting the branches was fun, but it wasn't enough. Something is still missing.
In the days that follow,
he's used often. He reshapes a hubcap, blasts through some sheet rock, knocks a
table leg back into place. Still, he's left unfulfilled. So he longs for more
action. He wants to be used as much as possible to knock things around, to
break things, to blast things, to dent things. He figures that he just hasn't
had enough of these events to satisfy him.
More of the same, he
believes, is the solution to his lack of fulfillment. Then one day someone uses
him on a nail.
Suddenly, the lights come
on in his hammer soul. He now understands what he was truly designed for. He was
meant to hit nails. All the other things he hit pale in comparison. Now he
knows what his hammer soul was searching for all along.
We are created in God's
image for relationship with him. Being in that relationship is the only thing
that will ultimately satisfy our souls. Until we come to know God,
we've had many wonderful experiences, but we haven't hit a nail.
We've been used for some noble purposes, but not
the one we were ultimately designed for, not the one through which we will find
the most fulfillment.
Augustine summarized it this way: "You [God] have made us for yourself and
our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee."
A relationship with God is the only thing that will
quench our soul's longing. Jesus Christ said, "I am the bread of life.
He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never
be thirsty." (John 6:35)
Until we come to know God, we are hungry and
thirsty in life. We try to "eat" and "drink" all kinds of
things to satisfy our hunger and thirst, but yet they remain.
We are like the hammer.
We don't realize what will end the emptiness, the lack of fulfillment, in our
lives.
Even in the midst of a Nazi prison camp, Corri Ten
Boom found God to be wholly satisfying: "The
foundation of our happiness was that we knew ourselves hidden with Christ in
God. We could have faith in God's love...our Rock who is stronger than the
deepest darkness."
Usually when we keep God out, we try to find
fulfillment in something other than God, but we can never get enough of that
thing. We keep "eating" or "drinking" more and more,
erroneously thinking that 'more' is the answer to the problem, yet we are never
ultimately satisfied.
Our greatest desire is to
know God, to have a relationship with God. Why? Because that's how
we've been designed. Have you hit a nail yet?
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