We all, to varying degrees, are conscious of this yawning cavern placed within us by Someone without. Inexplicably, we hunger for a meal we have not yet tasted; we thirst for streams our lips have never touched. And we cannot shake it. We try to appease the appetite with earthly snacks or distract ourselves with cheap thrills, but silent rooms still scare us. There, the whisper finds us. There is more.

Men have killed to have it. Kings have gone mad trying to find it. Wars have served it. Affairs have worshiped it. Its pursuit binds us all together.

I can remember my own desperate search for it.

The best experiences in this life would feed my craving for it. Sunny days at the beach, Friday nights on the field, caresses of beautiful music, summer evenings dancing at Latin clubs, Christmas mornings with family. Although these mesmerized for a moment, the spell was soon broken with their departure. Summers turned to winter. Laughter turned to silence. The sun vanished from the horizon. Full rooms emptied. The music stopped.

Play as I would with sports, dance, women, and entertainment — the cacophony of all of earth’s enjoyments didn’t silence the still small whisper: There is more. When the scrolling ceased, the season passed, and the sin was spent, something still beckoned in the silence.

So, I set off to find the enchanted flower on the next hillside: that pleasure, this girlfriend, that achievement. When I would get to the end of each rainbow, I discovered the cheat afresh. All is vanity, a chasing after the wind.It was the small fire perfectly placed between my soul’s shoulder blades. Reach as I may, the throbbing remained.

Joy Is Not an ‘It’

I doubt I describe an ache you have not felt. I wager that all can give their personal testimony to what Pascal wrote so long ago:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

We all, to varying degrees, are conscious of this yawning cavern placed within us by Someone without. Inexplicably, we hunger for a meal we have not yet tasted; we thirst for streams our lips have never touched. And we cannot shake it. We try to appease the appetite with earthly snacks or distract ourselves with cheap thrills, but silent rooms still scare us. There, the whisper finds us. There is more.

That voice finally caught me one silent evening in my dorm room. Exhausted and mostly unwillingly it brought me to a Book. And there I read the secret it had prepared me to hear my whole life: Unfading joy, the kind that does not wilt or flee, that cannot be stolen or destroyed, the indomitable, the unrelenting happiness I longed for was not an impersonal it, but existed in relation to a him.

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