Filling the hole

Ever feel like you have this huge hole inside and you just can't fill it? I do! I needed to write this thought process down today as a reminder to myself. Feel free to read along if you also have a hole inside that you're trying to fill and need to think on it a bit.


I'm awful about reading this daily devotional book that I have, but for some reason I picked it up today. It's very strange because the topic of "Peace" has been on my heart a lot lately. There was a great quote in it today that really stuck with me - "Peace is not having all things in control, but knowing Him who controls all things".


I often don't feel at peace and when I stop and take a look back I realize it's because I've been trying to control my life all by myself. The mentality is "it's MY life and I'll do with it what I please". Truth of the matter is, if it weren't for God's grace I wouldn't have opened my eyes today or even taken a breath. I wouldn't be able to look at the beauty around me or see D's smile. It's then that I realize that the reason things feel so crazy is because I've just been too busy to remember that this life isn't mine to control. I know I've blogged about this before, but I guess I'm a slow learner and need a reminder every so often =).


When I get crazy and stressed it's like this hole inside me starts to develop and it get's larger and larger. I look for things to fill it - food, surfing the net, working, buying things and strangely the hole is still there. Some people look for other things to fill it - meaningless relationships, alcohol, smoking. As hard as I try, I just can't seem to fill this hole. But when I take a step back, slow down and acknowledge my Creator, I realize that nothing is going to fill the hole but Him.


Picture this with me - your best friend betrays you and of course you're broken hearted. Now things get's even worse and you're arrested for a crime that you didn't commit. How scary would that be? Knowing that there's nothing that your friends and family can do about it. You just think "How on earth is this happening to me?". It's got to be an incredibly scary and lonely feeling to say the least. Not only are you arrested, but now you're convicted. Your own peers are now convinced that you're guilty and they talk the judge into sentencing you to death..............TODAY! Wow! So you're beaten beyond an inch of your life and forced to carry a heavy object to the top of a hill in all your misery and you know you're on your way to your death. Nails are then driven into your hands and your feet (just image how painful that would be having a sharp object going through all that cartlidge and skin and veins - sorry to be so graphic but this is a REAL pain that I'm trying to convey here). Thorns are then put on your head. Then you're put upright on a cross to hang. I would think that it would be excrutiating to move or breath with your weight simply hanging from the nails that have been driven through your body. Now you're laughed at and spit on.


Imagine all of this happened to someone that you love. What if you were the one that betrayed them and it then turned into this? What if you realized after their death that they did all of this FOR YOU. They knew that something in your heart wasn't right and it was either you or them and they chose to die for you.


True story of course. God in the flesh. These people spitting on him and laughing at him, that without Him who hangs there they wouldn't even be breathing. They didn't believe in Him and they didn't give him the respect that He so rightly deserves. He's God's son so of course he could have gotten himself out of that mess, but he chose to die for every single one of us so that we can live forever.


I for one want peace and I don't want to be the one disrespecting the one that hung there on that cross FOR ME. So out of respect and thanks I need to learn to lay it there. Right there where those people tortured him, I need to walk past them and lay my life at the foot of the cross. Which he so rightly deserves. Then, and only then, TRUE peace is found and the hole is filled.