The point of this little remembrance isn’t that striving for things is bad, or somehow ungodly. Rather, the point is I was not satisfied, even after achieving a major milestone in my life. Soon, I was driven to find something else to fill the hunger that emerged. The reality is that only one thing can truly satisfy the human heart: knowing and loving the One who created it. That’s why St. Augustine, a disciple of Christ and bishop of the fourth and fifth centuries, famously wrote: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”
Think back on your own life, on the times when you’ve been restless, dissatisfied, hungry for something deeper than the things in your life were able to give you. Perhaps you are experiencing that hunger now. Or perhaps you feel like everything in life is good right now, and there is only an occasional twinge or stab of hunger, when night has settled and the moon has almost completed its course, and the house is silent and heavy with a promise of sleep that never seems to come.
You were made for the One who created you.
That’s the beginning of the Great Story. Your life has a purpose, a shape, and a destiny that ends and begins with the love of the Creator who intentionally brought you into existence in this time and this place. He wants so much for you to be in communion with him that he built the possibility of that intimacy within your very being. We hear of God’s desire to be in relationship with us in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah. The Lord is speaking to the young Jeremiah, and God affirms his love for him and his desire for Jeremiah to serve him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (1:5).
What the Lord says to Jeremiah is true for each and every one of us. We may be tempted to gloss over the stunning revelation that God has offered us. “Big deal,” we might say. “So what if God knows us? He’s God and knows everything.” The problem is that we lack an appreciation for the biblical concept of knowledge. We are not talking about surface knowledge—the knowledge that we might have of an acquaintance or neighbor. In fact, we are not even talking about the knowledge we might have of a close friend. The biblical word translated as “knowledge” from the Greek indicates heart knowledge: in-depth, intimate connection. That’s why biblical writers sometimes used it as a euphemism, or “stand-in,” for relations between husband and wife—the marital act. As an example, in the Gospel of Luke the angel Gabriel has just appeared to Mary and declared that she will bear a son, and this boy will be the messiah, the long-awaited savior. In some translations of the Bible, she replies, “How can this be, since I do not know a man” (1:34, emphasis added).
Here is the depth of God’s love for us. He knows us deeply, intimately, and he knew us before we were “formed in the womb”—in other words, before we were even conceived. Before we existed the Lord held us in his heart, knowing everything about us. And while this image is somewhat metaphorical, the radical truth is that the Father waited through the long stretch of eternity for your conception, and for mine. The Father must have danced with joy and delight when we came into being, for at last we could experience the love he held for us. Now at last we could respond and live out that encounter.
From that moment, the Father’s arms have been open wide. He knows your name and who you are, and he has been calling you to a relationship that will ignite the deepest parts of who you are and fill you with peace, fulfillment, joy, wholeness, and a perfect love beyond all imagining. The power of this story lies, in part, in its immediacy. This life-changing relationship is not just a promise for a time when our earthly life is over. No, the Lord wants us to experience this peace, joy, fulfillment, wholeness, and healing now, in this life.
The Bible is filled with the proclamation of the possibility of this relationship. The books of the Bible, especially the New Testament, have a language and a description for the experience of this relationship. In Scripture, it is called the kingdom of God. You and I were created for this kingdom. It has been prepared for you and is waiting for you—this kingdom which begins on earth and lasts for all eternity.
It is your birthright.
Are you willing to follow the arc of the story and claim it?
Further Reflection
Take some time (at least fifteen minutes a day) to reflect on any of the following Scriptures over the course of the next few days and weeks. If you have never really opened the Bible and spent time prayerfully reading, don’t stress about it. Simply copy and paste these references into your search engine, print them out, and read them.
• Jeremiah 29:11–15
• Matthew 11:28–30
• Luke 12:22–34
• Psalm 139
• John 15:9–17
• Romans 8:31–39
You might find it helpful to pray for a few minutes before reading these Scriptures and ask the Lord specifically for the grace to receive exactly the message he is trying to communicate to you at this time in your life. Then, read the specific passage slowly and prayerfully several times. Take note of any words or phrases that jump out at you.
When you are finished reading the passage, ask the Lord to shed more light on the word(s) or passage that jumped out at you. Ask God to reveal to you what, specifically, that word or phrase might have to do with your life right now.
Small Group Questions
1. If God truly is love, then the various ways that we experience authentic love are encounters with God. What are some of the ways that you have experienced love in your life? Which ones have had the most profound effect on you?
2. How would you characterize your relationship with God (in other words, if a friend asked you to describe what it’s like to be in a relationship with God, how would you respond)?
3. How would you describe the love that a parent has for a child? Do you find it difficult to believe that this is the kind of love that God has for you? Why or why not?
4. Consider the truth that God, as Trinity, is eternal relationship, and that since you were made in God’s image, you were created with a hunger to love and to be loved. What are some of the ways that you have sought to fill that hunger in your life?
5. Is it difficult for you to receive the love that God has for you? Why or why not? What are some of the obstacles that you have in your life to receiving that love? What are some things in your life that make it easier for you to receive that love?
6. Name one thing that you hope to get out of reading this book and reflecting on it in a small group.
7. If you have had the opportunity to reflect on the Scripture passages in the Further Reflection section, which passages did you prayerfully read, and what struck you or moved you when you read those passages?
chapter 2
Jesus: The Embodiment of the Kingdom
Stories require conflict, otherwise they wouldn’t be stories at all.
Something—a problem, person, or situation—must provoke the hero, present an obstacle, or oppose the hero in some way. Conflict fuels the narrative of every classic story, and nowhere is that more true than in the Great Story.
Conflict