The Emptiness Inside Us

In all of us, we bear an emptiness. An uncomfortable, unnamable void. We fall short of complete satisfaction no matter what we do. It’s overwhelming really, but if we can be busy enough or entertained enough, maybe just maybe that nagging emptiness won’t drive us mad. If busyness doesn’t work well enough, maybe we can comfort ourselves with food or friendships, or find an escape through some sort of drink or drug.

But no, it won’t work. In reality, that emptiness, often felt as an overwhelming sense of loneliness is too much for us to handle. And no temporary “solution” will do. It only makes the weight of it all heavier and the pain of it all stronger each time we return to reality. When the entertainment is over, when sobriety hits, so does the nagging ache that something is lacking in our life.

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I have a clear memory of being about the age of 10, walking through my home and stopping in front of our old wooden book shelf full of books. This shelf with all the books had always been a part of our home as far as I could remember, but the fact that we had a TV in every room and reading a novel was the last thing I’d choose to do for fun, it brought a feeling of mystery to me about the books. So, I decided to take a peek at these mysterious-to-me books on the old wooden shelf. I picked up a book named Huckleberry Finn, and, other than a few words I had never seen before, I wasn’t all that interested. So, I picked up a Bible and opened it. Then I read something that struck me. It said,

“As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for you, O God”

The poetic essence of these words drew me in and I read it over and over in an attempt to commit it to memory. I had no understanding of what those words meant, but I felt the seriousness and depth of them and in the simplest way I found them to be a dainty piece of treasure full of beauty and worthy of memorizing. So then, when I was content with my memory practice, I set the Bible back on the shelf and moved on with my life.

Those words didn’t strike me again for nearly a decade, and this time I was struck with comprehension. I finally knew why I felt so empty and lonely. I finally knew what I had been thirsting for all along. It was God.

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Although that emptiness drew to many places I wish I’d never gone, I’m grateful for that emptiness. I’m grateful for it in the same way that I’m grateful for hunger or thirst, because the drive to eat and drink is what keeps my body alive. If we weren’t born with the desire to fill our bellies, we wouldn’t, and if we didn’t, we’d die. How wonderful it is to have a precious newborn baby who is ready and willing to nurse! What a peace it is for a mother to know her baby has a healthy desire to eat and therefore getting nourished the way the little one needs. It’s not something we may think about, the concept that having food and water is important, but actually knowing that we need it and having a desire to consume it is equally important. Our need to sustain our bodies with food and drink is a very real need, no matter if we have or do not have the drive to fulfill it. It’s for that reason, that the emptiness we feel in our soul is a blessing. How good of a thing it is to feel in the depths of our hearts that we have an unmet need and to know we need to do something about it.

The only thing we lack from there is knowing what that one need is.

Our creator designed us to desire Him, the problem is that most of us don’t know that it’s Him we are thirsting for. We know the empty feeling, the sense that we are lacking something in our life. If we just had (fill in the blank) it would be better, we’d be happy. A better job, a better house, a better body, a better spouse (or a spouse at all), a child…But the only right answer to fill in the blank is Jesus himself.

In John 4:10-26  Jesus said to the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Again, in John 7:37-38 Jesus speaks to the people,

Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

Just like the woman at the well did, we can ask him to quench our thirst, too. We can ask Him to end that nagging emptiness in our hearts, because He is the only one who can. Not only is He able, He is willing. Jesus is ready to take away our emptiness, to fill the void in our lives. He is ready to fulfill our greatest need, we simply have to be willing to let Him fill it, and nothing else. No more trying to satisfy our hearts with other things. Too often, as we make these attempts to fill this dreadful void in our life, we only enlarge the problem. In my own experience, as I drove myself further from the true answer to my problems, I was driving myself further from God, and as a result further from peace. But by God’s grace that lack of peace made me so desperate for hope that I realized the ache in my soul was much deeper than anything in this world could fix. No prescriptions could fix my spirit, no relationship, no sort of earthly pleasure could mask the pain I had any longer. Only Jesus could heal it.

Whether we’ve been walking with Him for a day or for many years, the choice has to be made every day to go to Him for fulfillment. If not, if we choose the things of this world to heal our hearts or quench the feelings of inadequacy, we can count on being disappointed. There is no greater joy than to live life with and for the Lover of our souls! There isn’t a greater peace than to be daily guided by the One who knows all things and has the highest care for us. He is our living water.

Psalm 42:1-2 NKJV

As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God