“I can’t get no……. satisfaction”
Mick Jagger
When I was a kid I made things with my hands….boxes, bags fishing lures…….all kinds of things. Then, when I was in high school, I discovered that I was smart. I figured that the best way to use my smarts was medical school. So I began studying…….hard, sometimes 18-20 hours a day…………….and I stopped making things. This led to a nearly 40 year career in medicine. I really enjoyed my job, made plenty of money, and got to help a lot of people. I used to say “I have the best job in the world”. In fact, I probably did. Then I retired…….. and now I’m making furniture. My work ranges from high end craft furniture to pieces that approach art.
It is really satisfying…….much more satisfying than my practice of medicine. It is so much more satisfying that I have come to the conclusion that a this is what I was meant to be from the start. This is what I was made for. Looking back, my “real career”, medicine, was great……. but this is even better. From where I stand now, I can see that medicine, while it was rewarding…….was a distraction……..a detour en route to my real destination.
Then it hit me………… this is what heaven will be like. Forget the cloud, the halo, and the harp. In paradise you will be exactly where you were meant to be. You will be doing exactly what you were meant to do. You will be with the people you were meant to be with. You will experience the reality that you were designed for. You will know a degree of satisfaction unlike anything that you have ever dreamed of…….unlike anything that any human being has ever known.
Your life today could be a disaster…….. or it could be a huge success. Still, if you honestly search your heart, you know that your life is not all that it could be. That emptiness, that vague sense that something is missing is speaking to you.
You were created. You were specifically designed for something……….and that something is paradise. That is where you were meant to be. This violent broken world is not what God had in mind for you when he designed you. The dissatisfaction that you feel in your heart is the result of being in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. You may be very successful…..or not…….but, at your core, you know that this is not quite right. You know that there is something more.
This is your heart pointing you toward home………toward the peace, satisfaction, and joy that comes from being in the place that you were designed for……. the place that you were created for.
For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Paul, NIV
But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”
Paul, NIV