Instruction manuals--I will never look at them the same way again. The past several days I've spent HOURS trying to write one for a leaf blower (the internal parts) for my tech writing class. A page of typed pre-planning, taking apart and assembling the leaf blower twice (I swear they glue the screws in...), struggling endlessly with technology (why on earth do the margins keep moving?) as I try to upload and format pictures and diagrams...who knew it could be so much work?
After our rough draft, we had a "non-technical friend" try out our directions. My friend was told to READ THE DIRECTIONS and assemble the piece...funny how the READING part gets lost when you're engrossed in assembly (can you sense my writerly frustration at this point?!). At one point, she misread my instructions and tried to stick a part where it didn't belong. When it didn't fit, she kept trying, twisting it around, pulling it in and out, pounding it with her fist when it wouldn't cooperate. She kept at it for five minutes before it finally occurred to her that she could have read the directions wrong.
I think the trick was that it ALMOST worked, so she thought she just needed to keep trying, force it into place. Didn't occur to her that the piece wasn't meant to fit there.
Is this how God sees us?
St. Augustine once wrote, "Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you." We all have a God-shaped, gaping hole, for He has set eternity in our hearts.
I've heard many times in gospel presentations that trying to get to God through good works is like thinking that good training and a running start will enable you to leap across the Grand Canyon. Last year, though, I also heard Tenth Avenue North apply that Grand-Canyon imagery to the universal quest for contentment. We sense this frighteningly deep hole, absence, ache deep in our beings, and we frantically try to fill it. We turn to all sorts of things: food, friends, facebook, acceptance, good grades, success. Like the guy in the above picture, we search everywhere for love. When we do these things, though, it's like pouring buckets of gravel into the Grand Canyon, hoping to fill it up.
For me, it's especially people. Though I've generally considered myself a pretty loving person, I've realized recently that I use people. I give, but I primarily seek out friends and people so that I might satisfy my needs, get from them love, acceptance, and approval. Seek from them satisfaction.
But they let me down, and I get hurt, bewildered, and angry.
I have the everlasting fountain of life beckoning for me to come, yet I keep turning to broken cisterns that cannot satisfy.
Oh Lord, grant that I might find my satisfaction in you and you alone. Let me turn to you when I encounter the leaks and cracks in the broken cisterns of relationships. Flow over, like a fountain, into my life and words. Help me love people, to see that they can never fill my God-shaped hole.
