This World Is Not Enough

I have what I call an 'itchy eye' for food. I am never satisfied with what's on my plate.  One of life's most agonizing moments for me is deciding what to eat when confronted with a variety of choices. I step into a coffee-shop, restaurant or wherever and the first thing I do is look at other people's plates, and always I find myself wishing I could order and taste a little bit of everything. To 'adventurous' (read greedy) souls like me, only 1 kind where got enough?? Unfortunately or fortunately, this organ inside me called my stomach can't take in much; I notice especially as my hair turns whiter faster, so seemingly my stomach seems to shrink in its capacity to contain food. A true-blue M'sian at heart, I was one of those who would never say no to the rallying cry of "food, glorious food". I still find it difficult to say no, but I guess the shrinking stomach is God's way of helping me handle the temptation of eating like there is no tomorrow. Still that doesn't stop me from looking wistfully at all the choices available when I am out food-hunting and wishing I could have them all.
Neither is this 'longing for more' limited to something as mundane as the composition of my daily diet. Many are the times when a stirring for 'something more' hits my soul. The desire can come unannounced unexpectedly like something that's always there lingering at the back of the mind. It can be sparked off by a passing glance at the beggar standing below the traffic lite  as I am sitting in the comfort of my air-con car, muttering at the abominable slowness of drivers around me. Or a chance encounter in the playground with the Indonesian 'ibu' who has to wake up in the early pre-dawn hour to start work in the restaurant nearby; she sighs as she tells me her legs ache with the constant standing and heavy manual labor. The thought flits by in random moments of my daily living - what does this world have to offer??

I have loved and lost...death has robbed me of a spouse, relatives, frens on earth. I have been there, done this and that, had my share of tears and laughter. I continue to love and yes, I still get hurt in the process. I see suffering, injustice, oppression; the filth, scum and ugliness of life on planet earth. But I also have eyes for its beauty, not just manifest in picturesque dawns and idyllic beaches, but in very poignant portraits of love - the glances of moms, dads or grandparents as they come by to pick up the kids after school. The cute adorable smiles of the little ones that greet me when I walk pass their classes each morning. Indeed this world has much to offer. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful - they are all there. I guess it's enough for some, since all the variety of experiences of a life-time are already available in this world. But when everything is said and done, my heart thirsts and hungers inexplicably, as if it knows there is something deeper that I am meant to find, something more than just to live a 'feast' of experiences on this earth. It's like eating at a buffet, yet ending up not quite satisfied, as if there's something still missing from the menu.  A saint termed it as as the vacuum in every human heart that only God can fill.

One of the pastors at the combined church prayer meeting I attended recently talked about Christians  who long to go home to heaven but are willing to stay on earth, because they accept that God has given them a job to finish here first. I guess that hits the nail on my head. Every now and then (especially when the road of my life gets a bit bumpy) I tell God I can't wait to die, so that I can live forever in His world, in accordance to His promise of eternal life for all who call upon the name of Jesus. Nope, I am not suicidal, nor am I depressed. Sure, life on earth could be better, easier, funnier, like I could be richer, prettier, stronger. But it's not to avoid or escape the calamities/problems of this life that makes me feel this way. It's the fact that this world is not enough for me - as much as God has already blessed me with an abundant overflowing life in this world -  I want, I am impatient to get hold of that other world which is the ultimate reward of my faith - where He is, the abode of perfect Love. Where the glory of God illuminates His holy city and there is no need of sun/moon....  where nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter in all their glory....where its gates will never be closed at the end of day because there is no night there...where nothing evil will be allowed to enter.... (Revelation 21:23-27). If I could, I would give up this world in a nano-second blink of an eye in exchange for that one. The desire tugs at my heart, knowing there is nothing in this world that can compare or match with what that other world has to offer. 

But my time is not yet, at least not for now. I haven't finished the job God gave me to do here. So I fix my eyes on the cross of Jesus, whereat lies the promise of my hope for a world beyond this one, a world that will finally be enough. 


"For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing.... While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it's not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life" ......2 Corinthians 5:1-4