shapes

so I have been trying to stay on top of my reading lately (not necessarily the school readings). I just finished Soul Cravings, by Erwin McManus. Amazing stuff there: I would highly recommend it for anyone who is trying to define themselves.

Soul Cravings helps you see the four things your soul craves: Love, Destiny, Meaning, and Seeking. It is an easy read, and is extremely compelling.

Basically the bottom line is this: our souls (my soul, your soul, your neighbor's soul, everyone's soul) is searching for something to fill the emptiness. Some have found it, others still search. Some have tried to fill it with drugs, sex, money, alcohol; some try to fill it with religion; still others decide to simply ignore their cravings and float through life. But, to put it simply, that is putting a cylinder in a square hole.

You remember that toddler toy, right? You have shapes and have to put them in the right hole. But if you tried hard enough- you could smash the cylinder through the square hole, as well as other shapes if you tried hard enough. But was the object of the game to get the shapes in the box? No. The object of the game was to put the shapes in the right holes.

Unfortunately, this is not something anyone can do for you. No one can hold your hand through life, making your decisions. Again to the toy analogy: everyone has seen the child trying to put the square in the circle hole and thought, "This kid is an idiot, he has been trying with that same hole for about an hour." (Maybe idiot is too strong of a word, but the point is that they can see what you can't- that the stinkin' shape doesn't fit the hole. They can see that because at one time or another, they were there too, trying to fit a square in a triangle hole or something like that.

Your soul, we will say is this toy; except there is only one hole (and for Sunday School and nostalgia purposes, we will use a cross). This cross hole in the middle of your soul begins to bug you, so you try to fill it with drugs (a square). It might fill part of the hole, but there is still a large chunk missing, so you fill it with alcohol (triangle). Still large chunks- get the picture?

The only thing that will fill your soul is God. This is not a strange coincidence, and not something cooked up by religious freaks in order to get your money. God created your soul. He created it to search for Him. But He also gave us free will, because God wants us to want Him. And so we search, and we mess up, and we get hurt, and we, hopefully, realize the idiocracy of trying to fill the hole ourselves, and run to God.

You have probably heard this in some way before- maybe even in this way. But I pray that if you are trying to fill your soul with squares and circles and triangles, that you will see your mistakes. I saw mine. I saw how stupid I was to try to quench the cravings of my soul with things of this world. Your soul=not of this world, so why try to fill it with things of this world.