Before I had my heart attack in 2005, I frequently had this sense that something was missing from my life. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It was confusing because at church we would hear that when you have a sense that something is missing, it’s God that we’re missing. But I had God in my life. Yet there was still this sense that something was missing.
God is essential, and if you don’t have God in your life, it wouldn’t surprise me if you said you had a sense that something was missing. However, just having God in your life isn’t the full picture. I’ve discovered that we also have a deep need to live a life of significance and meaning. We need to live out our deepest held values, or we’ll feel like something is missing.
This is contrary to what we hear from our culture. Our culture says that we each need to live for ourself. We need to buy that thingy to satisfy ourself. We need to move up in house and level up our lifestyle. We’re told to satisfy “me.”
So, we often bury our most deeply held values because they don’t seem to agree with what we see in our culture. We think the problem is us, not our culture. This is where a sense that something is missing can come from. A life of “me” doesn’t have “you” in it. And a life of “me” doesn’t have much significance. A life of “me” is missing connection, love and purpose.
If you feel that something is missing in your life, I urge you to seek this out. It could be you are missing God. And maybe you are missing living out a purpose and a mission.
