Searching for God Knows What

I love reading. God has created some incredibly inspirational people, who have equally inspirational things to say. The following quotes are from Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, and in it Miller very simply, yet effectively, explains why we are the way we are. The human condition. The first of these quotes builds up to the second one effectively.

But what we really need is God. What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don't worry about death, about our hair thinning, about other drivers pulling in front of us on the road, about whether people are poor, or rich, good-looking or ugly, about whether we feel lonely or about whether or not we are wearing clothes. (Referring to Adam and Eve.)We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know.

I love this next quote, and I think it has such a powerful way of speaking to anyone who really thinks about it. This next portion is one of the greatest things I've ever read.

If a kid doesn't feel he is loved, he is going to go looking for it in all kinds of ways. He is going to want to feel powerful or important or touch, and she is going to want to feel beautiful and wanted and needed. Give a kid the feeling of being loved early, and they will be better at negotiating that other stuff when they get older. They won't fall for anything stupid, and won't feel a kind of desperation all the time in their souls. It is not coincidence that Jesus walks endlessly about love. Free love. Unconditional love.

I know that in my own life, when I don't feel loved, I go looking for it. But it's so comforting to know that there is only one place to truly find it. No doubt we can get glimpses of it here and there, but we can only get the full picture through Christ, and His sacrifice for us. It is through Christ that all things are made new. And it is only through Christ that we are given the purest image of love, without all the things that mess us up as humans.