I woke up and it was there. I went to sleep and it was there. It sometimes seems to be a constant companion. It is a hole, emptiness. There seems to be something missing from my experience of life, there seems to be something missing from me. I am willing to bet most people have felt something similar. You might express it a little different, but it is the same phenomenon. You feel incomplete.

This is nothing new. Humanity has struggled with this feeling and this lacking since Adam and Eve took that bite. Once humanity was complete and full and they walked with God, their Creator as they were meant to. But now, our experience paints a different picture. We walk around incomplete or empty, longing to once again be complete in God. Blaise Pascal, a brilliant philosopher and scientist 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 know through Jesus Christ.” This incompleteness we feel can only be filled by Christ.

But the problem is that even us who know Christ still struggle with this feeling! It is the constant struggle of Christians until we are taken home or Christ comes again. Our old nature and our new nature in Christ are in a struggle and we forget that only Christ can fulfill us.

We get caught up the romance and watch movies with tears in our eyes when someone says “you complete me” to one they have been pursuing. A human can’t complete us. The vacuum in our hearts is too big for that. Only Christ can complete us.

We get caught up in the rat race of pursuing success and think, if only I had that position, that job title, made x amount of money, or whatever it might be, then I will feel complete. But no temporary success can complete your sou that lives forever. Only the one who crafted your innermost being can do that.

We get caught up in our families, thinking that they are the end all be all and if they prosper then all will be right in the world. But your family can’t carry all your hopes for fulfillment. Even sitting and watching grandchildren and great-grandchildren run around you in your twilight years, which is a marvelous and great thing, will not bring the completeness we all crave. Only Christ can do this.

Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John chapter 6 using one of his famous “I am” statements. He says that he is the bread of life and whoever comes to him and believes in him will not hunger or thirst. Hunger and thirst are a way of expressing that need, that dependence we have, and also a way of expressing the lack we have in ourselves. Jesus says that he fills us and his filling will never end or diminish or fail. This is because the Bread of Life provides eternal life. Jesus Christ provides for us what we truly need and long for. Completeness in God. Jesus as the bread of life provides eternal life, he brings us back into relationship with God, he makes us whole and who we were made to be.

So go to Jesus, take and eat. Find completeness. Find fulfillment. Find satisfaction.