He flopped around in the blasting wind tunnel, like a
spaghetti noodle in a pot of boiling water. The instructor struggled to stretch
out the small boy’s contorting limbs to achieve a neutral posture, but soon his
time was up and the boy stepped out of the tunnel. One by one I watched the others
in my group take their turn leaning into the twelve-foot wide tunnel of the
indoor skydiving center. After about sixty seconds of a suspended belly flop
onto winds up to 170 mph, complete with cheeks flapping in the breeze like
flags on a pole, each person stepped out with huge grins smeared across their
faces.
I was a little nervous myself. I only knew a few people in
my group, and who wants to flop around like a hiccupping walrus in front of a
bunch of strangers? But as I took my turn and stretched out my legs and arms,
all I could do was grin. There was literally nothing but gushing air to hold me
up. Then the wind speed increased and I was skyrocketed into the tunnel and
then let down, high, then low, high, and then low, like a leaf tossed around in
a storm. I was falling without actually falling. The feeling was sensational in
every sense of the word and after stepping out of the tunnel and high-fiving my
friends, I found myself thinking, I kind
of want to do real skydiving now.
It happens often in life that we get a taste for something,
but instead of satisfying us, it only increases our thirst. We crave real peace
and joy and we catch glimmers of it all the time, but only glimmers. It blazes
into our lives at certain beautiful moments, but it quickly fades away, like
the last flashes of fireworks on the Fourth of July. And we feel the hole. We feel it when we close the cover of our book and wish
the story wasn’t over. We feel it anytime we say goodbye to a friend or loved
one. We grasp and claw at the bits and pieces, but can never sink our teeth
into the real thing.
The Lord doesn’t give us these desires to taunt or tease
us. C.S. Lewis said in his book The
Problem of Pain, “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some
pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” If God gave
us these longings, it is because He will someday fulfill them. So, when you feel
inside you the dichotomy of joy and sorrow, pleasure and aching, fullness and
vacancy, and longing echoes through your hollow soul, pray to the Father that He
will keep your heart strong until He comes to fill it with everlasting life and the glimmers are replaced with the real thing.
