In the holidays, I went to McDonald’s with my son, a ‘special treat’. Even I had been looking forward to it! But the funny thing is… that feeling didn’t last long. After I’d had the Quarter Pounder, I just felt a bit yuck and dissatisfied.
Do you ever have that same feeling? We look forward to new things. We dream about what will make life good. But when we get it, it never really hits the mark. We do it time and again, trying to find the thing that will satisfy. Well, it should give us a clue. A clue that nothing in this world can ever truly satisfy.
Revelation chapter 21 reads:
4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.
This verse is an amazing insight into God’s abounding grace. Earlier in the book we saw every creature glorifying him – and then we are told that one day, this same God will reach out his hand and wipe our tears away. How amazing: no matter how hurt, injured and ravaged you are, God promises to heal it all.
One day, we will dwell with God in a place where all the things that cause that hurt and pain have been taken away. Where death no longer takes away the people we cherish. Where the brokenness of relationships, the selfishness and rejection, has just simply been taken away. We will be new, not bearing the scars of this world. And we will be the people that God intended us to be.
That is when we will be truly and finally satisfied.
If you are anything like me, you desire acceptance. You want to be known and understood. You long for soul-satisfying relationships. Well, your creator knows you and has lovingly prepared a place just right for you. The Chronicles of Narnia end with these words:
“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”