Missing Puzzle Piece

 REALITY 101: THERE IS A GOD. IT IS NOT ME.

What a picture! Take a good look. It is easy to feel like there is a missing puzzle piece in our soul. What is it, we wonder?

I remember distinctly the season of my life where I sensed there was a gaping hole in my heart. Something was missing even though I had so much: friends, good family, sports, a few dollars in my pocket and was outwardly doing OK. Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” I found that to be absolutely true in my life. I knew a little about God but I did not know God.

People in the Bible had this same experience with a missing puzzle piece. The woman at the well tried to satisfy her thirst with MEN. For Nicodemus it was MANMADE RELIGION and for the rich young ruler it was MONEY. Something was missing. Maybe you have had that experience.

Saint Augustine, in Confessions, said it this way, “Because you have made us for Yourself … our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Philosopher Peter Kreft said, “The Restless Heart is every human heart, it settles only when it finds the One who made it.” C. S. Lewis wrote that we are forever creatures - spiritual to the core; eternal, not temporal. We are made for another world. This is not our ultimate home. A voice, a whisper, call it “eternity written on our heart” pulls us to our Creator, purpose, destiny and real peace and satisfaction. As a popular meme says, “People ask, ‘Do I really need Jesus just to go to heaven?’ Bro, you need Jesus just to go to Walmart.” Indeed!

Solomon writes his classic biography in a book called Ecclesiastes. I commend this 10 page read to you. It is found in the Bible. Solomon went on a quest to find where true meaning and life is found. As King and richer than Bill Gates, Solomon had the time and means to exhausted the sin spectrum. He tried it all; materialism, knowledge, pleasure, sensuality (700 wives and 300 concubines. How did anyone get in the bathroom in that household?). He tried everything to find satisfaction and life but at every attempt he said, “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity. It is just chasing after the wind.” 

Solomon’s book is like blinking neon sign warning people they do not have to go down the same empty paths he went down. He says, “EVERYTHING MINUS GOD = NOTHING. GOD PLUS NOTHING = EVERYTHING. He wraps up by telling young people to “Remember the Creator in the days of your youth.” After Solomon came through his mid-life crisis the hard way, he learned that. 

The truth is, He who has the Son has life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.”(1 John 5:11-12) Real life cannot be found outside of a personal relationship with the Lord.

Have you experienced that empty puzzle piece? Have you discovered that Jesus is the missing puzzle piece. The picture says it all.

Michael Sprague

Note: Author of picture unknown.