Meant for Something Beyond This World
Dear Champions,
The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is Isaiah 55:2 and Philippians 3:20 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. . . Our citizenship is in heaven.
In every single one of us there is a raging, unquenchable, and all consuming thirst that leads us to decide that nothing is good enough and nothing will satisfy us. We all have an infinite capacity for boredom and irritability with anything, even the best things. The thirst moves and progresses faster if you are successful. The more successful that you are, the faster that you come to realize that you have a bottomless pit inside of you. There is a black hole and an infinite vacuum in you and in me, and it does not matter what we put in there. At first it is great, or she is great, or he is great. Then, after awhile, I find fault, and I want to pull away.
I have a large folder filled with quotes from successful and famous people, who after they got to the top, said, I do not know what happened, but I wanted to kill myself. Boris Becker, for example, the tennis great, looking back on his life said that when he was at the height of his power and the height of his achievement and fame, he wanted to kill himself -- but why? Because when he got all those things, he still felt empty. He said, I had won Wimbledon twice; once I was the youngest player to ever do so. I was rich. I had all the material possessions I needed. I guess it is like the old song about movies and pop stars who want to commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. It is true. I had nothing on the inside.
Like I said, it goes faster if you are successful, but we are all on our way. Unless there is a cure, unless there is a medicine, unless there is a treatment, unless there is some kind of intervention, we are all on our way to being unhappy with anything and with everything. Nothing will ever be good enough. If there is nothing in this world that ever satisfies me, then it must mean that I am made for something beyond this world.
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining
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