What Gives True Satisfaction?

When I was a girl, mother would occasionally take me to the huge stores in St. Louis for a day of shopping the sale racks. 

I recall one return trip in which I thought of the packages heaped on the back seat and felt a strange emptiness seeping into my spirit. Shopping had been exciting and opening the packages would be fun, but I sensed that life must consist of more than just experiences and a collection of objects to satisfy me.

God has "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We were created with a longing for the spiritual world, so we can never be satisfied with the material world alone. If the Holy Spirit is not a reality in our lives, we will seek spiritual realities elsewhere. 

Solomon declared, "I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure....Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless" (2:10, 11). Solomon experienced everything life could offer and found it all to be without meaning.

In the end, we will realize that apart from Jesus, there is no real joy, no lasting satisfaction.

Dear Jesus, let my hunger be for You and You alone. Give me eyes to see the meaningless of all else. 

"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life...for my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink" (John 6:54)."My people have.... forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water" (Jeremiah 2:13).