Made For Something Beyond This World
Dear Champions,
The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is Matthew 6:33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
C.S. Lewis said in his chapter on hope that most people if they really learned how to look into their own hearts would know that they want something that this world can never give them. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never keep their promise. The longings that first arise in us when we first fall in love or first think of some foreign country or first pick up some subject that excites us, these are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning will ever satisfy. I am not speaking about what would ordinarily be called unsuccessful marriages or trips and so on, but I am speaking of the very best possible ones. There is always something that we have grasped at in that first moment of longing that just fades away into reality. The spouse may be a good spouse, the scenery has been excellent, it has turned out to be a good job, but it, the thing that we thought was going to be in the center of it, always evades us.
When you finally see that nothing in this world will ever satisfy you (and you will eventually see this), there are only four ways to possibly respond. You are going to have to choose one of them, and it will totally shape the rest of your life. You will either blame the things that you have and say that I have got to get better ones (better woman, better man, better job), or you will blame and hate yourself, or you will blame life and harden yourself so that you will never hope for anything at all, or you can blame your theory of reality. You can say, if there is nothing in this world that ever satisfies me, then it must mean that I am made for something beyond this world. One response makes you a fool, one makes you a self-hater, one makes you an utterly hard cynic, and one makes you a Christian.
Champions, have a great week!-David Vining
Posts
