Seeking Christ

Every heart searches for meaning. Every soul longs for happiness. We are born restless. We are born with a void inside, a missing piece, which moves us to seek fulfillment. We are like a beautiful and complex jigsaw puzzle with one missing piece. Without that last piece we remain incomplete, so we tirelessly search for the piece that will complete the picture.

We often attempt to place other appealing pieces which satisfy temporarily but do not complete the puzzle correctly. These fleeting and ultimately unsatisfying fillers may include materialism and vanity, drugs and alcohol, hedonism and egotism to name a few. Though alluring and perhaps temporarily successful in satisfying the inner restlessness, these vices rapidly deepen the void within us.

No matter how many different pieces we use to fill that last opening, there is only one, perfectly made piece that will fit flawlessly. Saint Augustine accurately identified it when he wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

We are created by God with a natural need for Him to reach personal fulfillment. We will remain restless, missing that last perfectly fashioned puzzle piece, as long as we resist God. He has created us for Himself and we need Him.

Some become so restless they run away from God, yet it is in God that fulfillment is found. Jesus urges us to turn to Him in our restlessness with His words, “come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” He said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” and she answered, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” In Christ alone our thirst ends, our search concludes, and we move forward with purpose.

In God we find the fulfillment of every desire of our hearts. It is in surrendering to Him that peace is found. It is in surrendering to Him that He will place that perfectly fashioned piece into our hearts, completing who we are. It is in Him that the restlessness of seeking dissolves into the happiness and fulfillment of having found Him. May the new year allow us to grow closer to Christ, enabling Him to place the perfectly fashioned puzzle piece that will fill us with peace and joy.