A Most Amazing Relationship

"There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator,

made known through Jesus."

Blaise Pascal

A relationship with God is something of a mystery. Why would the Creator of the universe care about mankind-about you and me? Psalmist King David asked that question:

"I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,

Your handmade sky-jewelry,

Moon and stars mounted in their settings.

Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,

Why do you bother with us?

Why take a second look our way?"

I wonder about that. You, too?

Wait a minute! Does God really exist? Can that be proven?

Pascal explains that belief in God is a gamble. He explains:

"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what

harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false?

If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then,

without hesitation, that He exists."

By "wager," Pascal is not suggesting we depend on faith instead of reason, but that after faith and reason educate each other in the search for God, there is a point where reason can go no farther. Faith, based on God's revelation in the Bible, leaps forward.

Dean Overman, author of A Case for the Existence of God, affirmed that

"Although theism requires a leap of faith, it is a leap into the

light, not into the dark; theism explains more than atheism, which

also requires a leap of faith."

A defining moment in the life of British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge came when he acknowledged to himself that he did not want God. He was afraid that God would change his lifestyle and replace it with something inferior. He writes:

"Is there a God? Well, is there? I myself should be very happy to answer

with an emphatic negative. Temperamentally, it would suit me well

enough to settle for what this world offers, and to write off as wishful

thinking, or just the self-importance of the human species, any notion

of a divine purpose and a divinity to entertain and execute it."

But after reviewing common paths to happiness (material things, power, status, sex, popularity), Muggeridge concluded that any satisfaction brought by them is short-lived. He could not ignore what he sensed-that although he did not want God in his life, God

wanted him.

Muggeridge's initial resistance to a relationship with God illustrates our natural tendency to put self, or anything else, in the vacuum only God can fill. The Bible calls that tendency sin; we disobey the first commandment to "have no other gods before me." If our highest allegiance is to self or family or nation or race, we not only minimize who we are, we actually contribute to the destruction of the social fabric. We become egocentric or nationalistic or racist. Only if God is our highest good will we find our hearts drawn to people of all families, races, and nations.

Amazing.

God Bless,

Paul W. Swets

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